The whole -stan trope is pretty funny to me in its double geographical ignorance. It was/is used by people to refer to any country in the Middle East that is a

The whole -stan trope is pretty funny to me in its double geographical ignorance. It was/is used by people to refer to any country in the Middle East that is a “Muslim country” (itself a pretty uneducated vague label). But in actuality, -stan is a Persianate suffix that predates Islam and most of the countries are in Central Asia, not the Middle East. There’s also the fact that we call Armenia that name because of the Romans. In Armenian it’s called Hayastan.