Aneran in the context of "Arya (Iran)"

Aryan (/ˈɛəriən/), or Arya (borrowed from Sanskrit ārya), is a term originating from the ethno-cultural self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. It stood in contrast to nearby outsiders, whom they designated as non-Aryan (*an-āryā). In ancient India, the term was used by the Indo-Aryan peoples of the Vedic period, both as an endonym and in reference to a region called Aryavarta (lit. 'Land of the Aryans'), where their culture emerged. Similarly, according to the Avesta, the Iranian peoples used the term to designate themselves as an ethnic group and to refer to a region called Airyanem Vaejah (lit. 'Expanse of the Arya'), which was their mythical homeland. The word stem also forms the etymological source of place names like Alania (*Aryāna) and Iran (*Aryānām).

Although the stem *arya may originate from the Proto-Indo-European language, it seems to have been used exclusively by the Indo-Iranian peoples, as there is no evidence of it having served as an ethnonym for the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The view of many modern scholars is that the ethos of the ancient Aryan identity, as it is described in the Avesta and the Rigveda, was religious, cultural, and linguistic, and was not tied to the concept of race.

In Modern Persian, the word Īrān (ایران) derives immediately from 3rd-century Middle Persian Ērān (𐭠𐭩𐭫𐭠𐭭), initially meaning "of the Aryans" before acquiring a geographical connotation as a reference to the lands inhabited by the Aryans. In both the geographic and demonymic senses, Ērān is distinguished from the antonymic Anērān, literally meaning "non-Iran" (i.e., non-Aryan).

In the geographic sense, Ērān was also distinguished from Ērānšahr, which was the preferred endonym of the Sasanian Empire, notwithstanding the fact that it included lands that were not primarily inhabited by the various Iranic peoples.