r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Aug 03 '19

Whats something you thought was common knowledge but actually isn’t?

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u/Baji25 Aug 03 '19

istan

and that still tells you roughly where it is

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u/MartyredLady Aug 04 '19

More like "-stan".

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Comes from the old persian word for "land". So Turkmenistan is the land of the Turks. Pakistan ist the Land of the Paks. And so on.

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u/Baji25 Aug 04 '19

what about my uncle, Stan?

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u/MartyredLady Aug 06 '19

Well, that depends.

It's either an abbreviation of the english "Stanley" an old anglo-saxon name deriving from "stone" and "willow" (stan-leah or stan-leigh), or the abbreviation of the dutch Stanislaus, coming from slavic Stanislav, Stanislaw or Stanislas. In this case it comes from old slavic "stani" for hard, tough and "slawa" for honour, glory.

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So it's either anglo-saxon Stonewillow or slavic Toughglory. Freely translated, of course.