New entities and languages in the digital atlas of ancient and medieval names: naming the civilizations, cities, regions, and geographic features of the ancient and medieval worlds.https://onomastikon.org/enhttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/alans/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/alans/The last great Sarmatian people, whose name, cognate with Aryan, was written down from the Han court to the Frankish kingdoms, and who alone of the ancient steppe survive in a modern nation.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/avars/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/avars/The qaghanate on the Danube that besieged Constantinople and taxed the Balkans for two centuries, named by Byzantium, the Franks, and perhaps the Orkhon stones.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/gokturks/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/gokturks/The first steppe empire to call itself Türk, whose Orkhon inscriptions gave every later language its word for the Turkic peoples.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/hephthalites/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/hephthalites/The White Huns of Bactria, who humbled Sasanian Persia and pressed on Gupta India, named in Greek, Chinese, Armenian, Arabic, and Persian records.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/huns/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/huns/The steppe power whose irruption across the Volga in the 370s broke the old order of the West, and whose very name is a battlefield of identifications.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/khazars/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/khazars/The steppe qaghanate between Byzantium and the caliphate whose court embraced Judaism, named in Greek, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, and the Hebrew of its own royal correspondence.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/sarmatians/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/sarmatians/The Iranian steppe confederations north of the Black Sea, heirs of the Scythians, whose name the Greeks wrote first as Sauromátai and then as Sarmátai.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/medieval-hebrew/https://onomastikon.org/languages/medieval-hebrew/Afro-Asiatic (Semitic) · written in HebrewMon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/old-turkic/https://onomastikon.org/languages/old-turkic/Turkic · written in Old Turkic (Orkhon runiform)Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:29:01 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/moabite/https://onomastikon.org/languages/moabite/Afro-Asiatic (Northwest Semitic) · written in Moabite alphabetSat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/tamil/https://onomastikon.org/languages/tamil/Dravidian (Southern) · written in Tamil scriptSat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/romani/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/romani/The Indo-Aryan diaspora people who crossed the whole atlas within its final centuries, named by every host society they passed and by none of them correctly, while their own name for themselves went unwritten until after 1453.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/marmara/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/marmara/The inland sea between the two straits, Greek Propontís, "the fore-sea," renamed in Turkish for the marble island that built Constantinople.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/al-andalus/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/al-andalus/Islamic Iberia from the crossing of 711 to the last Naṣrid emirate, a genuinely new name-thread on Iberian soil whose own etymology is famously unsolved.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/baghdad/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/baghdad/The Abbasid capital on the Tigris, founded in 762 as Madīnat al-Salām on the site of an older village whose Iranian name, Baghdād, "god-given," refused to be replaced.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bukhara/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bukhara/The Samanid capital where Classical Persian literature was born; Arabic and Persian Bukhārā over a local name of disputed origin, the Tang annals' An state.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bursa/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bursa/Prusa of King Prusias, Pliny's provincial charge, and the first Ottoman capital; a Hellenistic king's name carried into the sultans' city of silk and tombs.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/byzantines/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/byzantines/The Greek-speaking Roman empire ruled from Constantinople from 330 to 1453, Rhōmanía to itself and Rūm to the east; "Byzantine" is a name it never heard.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cairo/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cairo/The Fatimid al-Qāhira, "the Victorious," built beside Fustat above the Roman fortress of Babylon; the city Egyptians simply call Miṣr, by the country's own name.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/caliphate/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/caliphate/The Islamic empire of the Prophet's successors, Rashidun through Abbasid as one Khilāfa thread; the Tāzīg of its Persian, Chinese, and Armenian neighbors.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cordoba/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cordoba/Roman Corduba, capital of Baetica, become Umayyad Qurṭuba, capital of al-Andalus; one name carried across the Latin-Arabic divide by the city that led both worlds.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/crusader-states/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/crusader-states/The Latin polities of the Levant, 1098 to the fall of Acre; the lands the west called partes transmarinae and Outremer, a country named entirely by distance.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/edirne/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/edirne/Hadrian's city in Thrace, the Adrianople of the disaster of 378, and the Ottoman capital before 1453; an emperor's name worn down to Edirne.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/fez/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/fez/Fās, the Idrisid foundation that became the scholarly capital of the far Maghreb, its short opaque name wrapped in founding legends.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/granada/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/granada/The Naṣrid capital Gharnāṭa, last Islamic state of Iberia, on the hill of ancient Iliberri; two names, two eras, one site above the Darro.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/guadalquivir/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/guadalquivir/The great river of southern Iberia, ancient Baetis, whose modern name is simply the Arabic al-Wādī al-Kabīr said with a Castilian accent.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/kairouan/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/kairouan/Al-Qayrawān, the first Islamic metropolis of the west, founded as an army camp and named with the Persian word for a caravan.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/khurasan/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/khurasan/Xwarāsān, "the land of the sunrise," the Sasanian east that became the caliphate's powerhouse province and the cradle of New Persian literature.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/konya/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/konya/Ancient Ikonion, Paul's Iconium, the Seljuk capital Qūniya where Rumi taught; the plateau city that served every empire under one adaptable name.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/maghreb/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/maghreb/Al-Maghrib, "the west, the place of sunset," the Arabic name that reoriented North Africa away from the older Libya and Africa threads.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/mecca/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/mecca/The sanctuary city of the Hijaz and birthplace of Islam, Qur'anic Makka and Bakka, with a disputed shadow in Ptolemy and a Song Chinese pilgrimage notice.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/medina/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/medina/The oasis of Yathrib, attested in cuneiform a millennium before the hijra, renamed al-Madīna, "the City," when the Prophet made it Islam's first capital.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/merv/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/merv/The Murghab oasis city, Achaemenid Marguš and Avestan Mouru, Sasanian Marw and Abbasid metropolis, whose name runs unbroken from Behistun to the Mongol sack.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/nicaea/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/nicaea/The lakeside city of the two great councils and the empire-in-exile, Greek Níkaia become Turkish İznik by swallowing its own preposition.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/nishapur/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/nishapur/Nēw-Šābuhr, "fair Shapur," the Sasanian royal foundation that became a quarter-capital of Khurasan and the city of Omar Khayyam and Attar.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ottomans/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ottomans/The House of Osman, Âl-i ʿOsmân, from frontier beylik to the conquest of Constantinople; the state whose 1453 closes this atlas.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/samarkand/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/samarkand/Marakanda of Alexander's historians, Sogdian Smārkanθ, Arabic and Persian Samarqand, Timur's capital; the stone fort that named itself once and kept the name through every alphabet.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/seljuks/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/seljuks/The House of Seljuk, the Oghuz dynasty that took the caliphate's east and opened Anatolia; named for one ancestor, and by the Byzantines, archaically, as Persians.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/seville/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/seville/Roman Hispalis become Arabic Išbīliya, the source of the modern Sevilla; the river port that outlasted every empire that held it.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/toledo/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/toledo/Livy's "small city" of Toletum, Visigothic royal capital, Arabic Ṭulayṭula, and the translation workshop where Arabic learning became Latin Europe's.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/transoxiana/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/transoxiana/Mā warāʾ al-Nahr, "what lies beyond the river," the Arabic name for the lands past the Oxus; ancient Sogdiana renamed from the far bank.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/classical-persian/https://onomastikon.org/languages/classical-persian/Indo-European (Iranian) · written in Perso-Arabic scriptMon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/medieval-latin/https://onomastikon.org/languages/medieval-latin/Indo-European (Italic) · written in Latin alphabetMon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/ottoman-turkish/https://onomastikon.org/languages/ottoman-turkish/Turkic (Oghuz) · written in Perso-Arabic alphabetMon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/byzantine-greek/https://onomastikon.org/languages/byzantine-greek/Indo-European (Hellenic) · written in Greek alphabetFri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/dilmun/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/dilmun/The island trade-land of the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia's holy isle and copper entrepôt, the earliest foreign country in the written record.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/magan/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/magan/The copper and diorite land of the Bronze Age Gulf, Mesopotamia's source of metal and black stone, whose name may survive in the Achaemenid satrapy of Maka.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/meluhha/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/meluhha/The farthest land of the Bronze Age sea-trade, Mesopotamia's name for what was most likely the Indus civilization, a country known by its cargoes.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bactra/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bactra/The capital of Bactria on the Balkh oasis, "mother of cities" to later tradition, holy to Zoroastrianism and seat in turn of satraps, Greek kings, and Kushans; the modern Balkh.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/chang-an/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/chang-an/The Han capital in the Wei valley, eastern terminus of the Silk Road, called Khumdan by the Sogdian merchants who wrote home from it; the site of modern Xi'an.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/pataliputra/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/pataliputra/The capital of the Mauryan and Gupta empires on the Ganges, the largest city of ancient India, known to the Buddhist canon as a fort in the making and to the Greeks as Palibothra.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/taxila/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/taxila/The great city of Gandhāra at the gate of India, a famous seat of learning in the Buddhist tradition, Persian satrapal seat, and the first Indian city to receive Alexander.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/pali/https://onomastikon.org/languages/pali/Indo-European (Middle Indo-Aryan) · written in Brahmi (editorial); the canon survives in Sinhala, Burmese, Khmer, and Thai copiesTue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/sogdian/https://onomastikon.org/languages/sogdian/Indo-European (Eastern Middle Iranian) · written in Sogdian scripts (Aramaic-derived); the Ancient Letters hand is encoded as Old SogdianTue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/armenia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/armenia/The highland kingdom whose people call themselves Hay and their land Haykʿ, but whom the world has always known by the exonym Armina, first carved into Darius's trilingual at Behistun.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/media/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/media/The first great Iranian power, the kingdom of the Medes in the northwestern Zagros, whose name the Achaemenids carried into their trilingual inscriptions and the Bible bound forever to Persia in the phrase "the Medes and the Persians."Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/urartu/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/urartu/The Iron Age kingdom of Lake Van, Assyria's great northern rival, called Urarṭu by its enemies and Biainili by itself, the name that reaches the Hebrew Bible as Ararat.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/classical-armenian/https://onomastikon.org/languages/classical-armenian/Indo-European (Armenian) · written in Armenian alphabetMon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/urartian/https://onomastikon.org/languages/urartian/Hurro-Urartian · written in Neo-Assyrian cuneiformMon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ararat/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ararat/The mountains where the ark came to rest in the Hebrew Bible, whose name is the same word as the Assyrian kingdom of Urartu, a country's name narrowed onto a single peak that no two traditions agree on.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/black-sea/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/black-sea/The sea the Greeks first called Áxeinos, the Inhospitable, then renamed by anxious euphemism Eúxeinos, the Hospitable, over an Iranian word that had only ever meant dark.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bosporus/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/bosporus/The strait at Byzantium between the Black Sea and the Propontis, whose name, "ox-ford," recalls Io, whom Hera turned into a heifer and who swam across it in her long wandering.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cappadocia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cappadocia/The highland of eastern Anatolia whose name the classical world took ready-made from the Old Persian satrapy Katpatuka, carried into Greek as Kappadokía.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/caspian-sea/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/caspian-sea/The great landlocked sea east of the Caucasus, named in turn for every people who happened to live on its shores, the Caspii, the Hyrcanians, and at last the Khazars.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/caucasus/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/caucasus/The mountain wall between the Black and Caspian seas, the edge of the Greek world where Prometheus was chained, whose name Alexander's geographers carried a thousand miles east to the Hindu Kush.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cilicia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cilicia/The coastal lowland behind the Taurus, named in three layers, the Bronze-Age kingdom of Kizzuwatna, the Assyrians' paired Ḫilakku and Que, and the Greeks' Kilikía.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cimmerians/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/cimmerians/The first steppe raiders to break into the ancient Near East, Homer's misty Kimmérioi and the Assyrians' Gimirru, whom the Hebrew table of nations remembers as Gomer.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/dead-sea/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/dead-sea/The lowest water on earth, too salt and bitter to hold life or carry an endonym, named instead by every neighbor for a different one of its lethal properties: the salt, the floating asphalt, the death, and the destruction of Lot's cities.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/gandhara/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/gandhara/The region of Taxila at the northwestern gate of India, named in the Vedas, governed as an Achaemenid satrapy, and sought by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims as Jiàntuóluó.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/halys/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/halys/The great looping river of central Anatolia, the Hittites' Marassantiya and the Greeks' Hálys, whose crossing the Delphic oracle promised would destroy a great empire, and did, the crosser's own.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/hellespont/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/hellespont/The narrow strait between Europe and Asia at the gate of the Troad, named for Helle, the girl who fell from the golden ram into its water as she fled across it.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/hindu-kush/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/hindu-kush/The great range between Bactria and India, which Alexander's geographers folded into the Caucasus and the Greeks called the Paropamisus, and which medieval travelers named the Hindu Kush, "the Hindu-killer."Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ionia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ionia/The Greek-settled coast of western Anatolia, the Iōnía whose people's name, carried east by Persians and Semites, became the whole Near East's standing word for "Greek."Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/iran/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/iran/The cultural-Iranian world named not for a place but for a people, the Aryans, from Darius's "an Aryan of Aryan lineage" to the Sasanian Ērānšahr, distinct from Pārsa the province.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/jaxartes/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/jaxartes/The northern of the two great rivers of Central Asia, the Greeks' Iaxártēs, the frontier of the Saka steppe and the limit of Alexander's advance, which the Arabs called Sayḥūn after the Pishon of Paradise.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/lebanon/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/lebanon/The cedar mountain behind the Phoenician coast, named across the whole Semitic family from a single root meaning "white," for its snows and pale limestone, and supplying the timber that built temples from Uruk to Jerusalem.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/lycia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/lycia/The mountainous southwestern corner of Anatolia whose people called themselves Trm̃mili and whom the Greeks, by a name with no resemblance to that one, called the Lycians.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/lydia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/lydia/The kingdom of Sardis and Croesus, who struck the world's first coins, called Lydía by the Greeks, Sparda by the Persians who made it a satrapy, and Luddu by the Assyrians whose great king its own king Gyges courted.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/oxus/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/oxus/The great river of Central Asia, the Avestan Vaxšu and its river-god, the northern wall of Bactria, which the Arab geographers renamed Jayḥūn after the Gihon of Paradise.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/persian-gulf/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/persian-gulf/The "Lower Sea" at the foot of the Tigris and Euphrates, the gulf every Mesopotamian king from Sargon onward measured his reach by, and which the wider world, naming it for the land on its far shore, came to call Persian.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/philistia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/philistia/The coastal plain of the Philistines, one Sea People whose name, Egyptian Peleset and Hebrew Pᵊlešet, the Greeks stretched into Palaistínē and so, in the end, into the modern name of the whole land.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/phrygia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/phrygia/The Anatolian kingdom of Gordion and Midas, known to the Greeks as Phrygía and to the Assyrians, who dealt directly with its king Mita, as Mušku, the same monarch the Hebrew table of nations remembers as Meshech.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/punjab/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/punjab/The land of five rivers east of the Indus, the Vedic Sapta Sindhu of "seven rivers" narrowed to the Sanskrit Pañcanada of "five," which Persian rendered exactly as Panjāb.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/red-sea/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/red-sea/The sea of the Exodus and the spice route, which the Hebrews named for the reeds at its head and the Greeks for a redness no one could quite explain, the two names colliding when the Septuagint turned the Sea of Reeds into the Red Sea.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/scythia/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/scythia/The great arc of Iranian horse-nomads of the steppe, the Greeks' Scythians and the Persians' Saka, whose Assyrian name Iškuza surfaces in the Hebrew Bible as Ashkenaz.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/sindh/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/sindh/The lower Indus valley, the Sindhu of the Sanskrit and the Hinduš of the Persians, which the Arabs called al-Sind and so split off, in a single consonant, from al-Hind, India itself.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/sogdiana/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/sogdiana/The land of Samarkand between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, named in the oldest Iranian scripture and the Achaemenid rosters alike, Old Persian Suguda and Greek Sogdianḗ.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/syria/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/syria/The land its own people called Aram and the outside world called Syria, two names for one region whose Greek form is most likely Assyria worn down, the Mesopotamian power's name stretched west over the Aramean country.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/taurus/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/taurus/The mountain wall that shuts off the Anatolian plateau from the southern sea, "the Bull" to the Greeks, which ancient geography made the very axis along which it divided Asia.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/xiongnu/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/xiongnu/The first great steppe empire, the nomad confederation north of Han China against which the Great Wall was raised, known almost entirely by the names the Chinese gave them.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/yuezhi/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/yuezhi/The nomads the Xiongnu drove out of Gansu, who swept west to take Bactria from the Greeks and founded the Kushan empire, the Chinese Yuèzhī and the Greeks' Tócharoi.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/languages/lycian/https://onomastikon.org/languages/lycian/Indo-European (Anatolian) · written in Lycian alphabetFri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/china/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/china/The Chinese civilization of the Yellow and Yangtze valleys, the Middle Kingdom at the eastern terminus of the Silk Road.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/corinth/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/corinth/The wealthy city of the Isthmus, commanding the land bridge and the two seas on either side of it, sacred to Aphrodite, destroyed by Rome and refounded by Caesar, and the seat of one of Paul's great churches.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/deccan/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/deccan/The southern peninsula of India, named in Sanskrit Dakṣiṇāpatha, "the southern road," and transcribed by a Greek merchant of the Periplus as Dachinabades, with the gloss that proves he understood it.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ganges/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ganges/The sacred river of northern India, the goddess Gaṅgā, whose name, unlike the Indus's, traveled almost unchanged into every language that learned it.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/himalayas/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/himalayas/The great northern range, the "abode of snow," whose Sanskrit word for snow, himá, the Greeks and Romans caught twice over as Imaus and Emodos, two names Pliny knew meant "snowy."Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/india/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/india/The civilization of the Indian subcontinent, known to itself as Bhārata and to the world by the name of the river Sindhu, the Indus.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/indus/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/indus/The great river of the northwest, whose Sanskrit name Sindhu, "the river," became the name of a subcontinent, a religion, and a province, and within Sanskrit itself the word for any river or the sea.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ionian-sea/https://onomastikon.org/civilizations/ionian-sea/The arm of the Mediterranean between southern Italy and Greece, named by the Greeks for Io, the maiden turned heifer who swam it fleeing Hera, and not, despite the resemblance, for the Ionians of Anatolia.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT