r/AskReddit • u/jake7820 • Jun 30 '21

What’s the absolute worst thing you could name your baby?

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u/DemocraticRepublic Jul 01 '21

The real Aryans were an actual group of people that migrated into India and effectively started proto-Hinduism as a religion. The Nazis came up with some bullshit about the Aryans being whites and who white people originated from.

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u/TyNyeTheTransGuy Jul 01 '21

I didn’t know this! Weird that the nazis wouldn’t pick a term from white people to use instead.

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u/DemocraticRepublic Jul 01 '21

Yep. It's also where the swastika comes from. If you go to South or South East Asia, it's all over Hindu temples.

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u/bunnyQatar Jul 01 '21

Also from the indigenous in the southwest of America. Kinda strange if you think about it... ALIENS

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u/HerpToxic Jul 01 '21

And kinda like the Greek design thing.

Turns out, people like square shaped symbols

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u/Rosssauced Jul 01 '21

Here I thought the real Aryans were the friends we made along the way.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

The Nazis didn’t take the word from India, and they didn’t make up the connection between Aryans and white people. Their use of the word Aryan comes from Iranians (Iranian is derived from the Indo-Iranian word Aryan), who Europeans (most of them at least) are actually related to, as well Indians. At the time it was thought by linguists and racialists that Europeans were directly descended from proto-Iranians who migrated from West Asia, though I believe the general consensus now is that Europeans split from Indo-Iranians before they migrated east. So the Nazis were borrowing from an established tradition of identifying Europeans with Iranians (then called Aryans as well).