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Both the Indo-European and Semitic languages have a combination of suffix+ending -i-a, which can be applied to form country names. It also conducts the feminine gender.

The IE and Semitic suffixes are not borrowings, but look like convergent evolution. The Semitic previously had -at feminine ending, and the -t was dropped.

As such, I wonder, whether Turcic languages have -ia suffixes and if they do, whether they are borrowed.

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In Turkish the suffix for referring to a country is -stan which is borrowed from Persian “stan” which means “land of”. Example - Bulgaria becomes BulgariSTAN - “The Land of Bulgars”. In Turkic languages that were under Soviet rule the suffix -stan was displaced by the Russian -ia.

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  • What was the original Turkish suffix?
    – Anixx
    Commented Oct 28, 2021 at 17:06
  • Not sure about -ia suffix but germanic languages use -land suffix for countries and turkic equivalent would be "el" or "elı" which literally means people or nation.
    – Tuňuquq
    Commented Mar 13, 2022 at 0:38

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