980: aryan Aug 15, 2017

 The concept of the Indo-European language family—the idea that most languages of Europe and India, as well as Persian, all descended from a single language—was a notion proposed in the late 18th century which helped to create the field of linguistics as it is known today. That language, and the idea that there was a single people who connected almost all Europeans, and certain Asians, genealogically soon gained political and social importance when it was used to support a sense of European identity. Many names were initially proposed for this, but the "Aryan language family" became quite popular. Even though the word 'Aryan' is originally Sanskrit and therefore not necessarily European, some linguists at the time believed that this was how the speakers of Proto-Indo-European referred to themselves. There's little substantial evidence for that, as the only people who used this term belonged to the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European, though some people claimed that it was European as well, drawing from examples in Greek and Latin or in the case of German linguist Friedrich Schlege, said it was related to the German word 'Ehre' meaning 'honor'.
 It should be noted that Nazis, especially academics, did not really prefer the term 'Aryan' because even though it distinguishes from Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic, it denotes too many peoples such as Slavs (and German-speaking Jews), and as anti-semitic German nationalists this was too inclusive. This term became more popular in America among neo-Nazis because white Americans tended to have ancestors from all over Europe (not necessarily Germany), as 'Aryan' suggests with its pan-European connotations. As side-note, the name for the country Iran is related to 'Aryan', and the Persian language belongs to the Indo-Aryan family.