The story
- Urdu · borrowed fromپاکستان
- English todayPakistan
Classical Persian بَلوچِسْتَان (balōčistān)bor. Urdu بَلوچِسْتان (balocistān)bor. English Balochistan English Pakistan Borrowed from Urdu پاکستان (pākistān). Coined by Pakistani politician Chuhdary Rahmat Ali in 1933, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never as an acronym of the names of the "Muslim homelands" of western India—Punjab, "Afghania", Kashmir, Sindh, and Balochistan. Absent from said acronym (which may possibly be a backronym) is the letter ⟨i⟩, which is epenthetic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.