The name Pakistan ( or ;  ) means "Land of (the) Spiritually Pure" in both Urdu and Persian languages. Many South-central Asian states and regions end with the element -"stan," such as "Afghanistan," "Pakistan," "Balochistan," "Kurdistan," and "Turkistan." This -"stan" is formed from the Iranian root *STA "to stand, stay," and means "place (where one stays), home, country". Iranian peoples have been the main inhabitants of the various land regions of the Ancient Persian Empires now owned by the states for over a thousand years. The names are compounds of -"stan" and the name of the peoples living there. Pakistan is a bit different; its name was coined on 28 January 1933 as ' by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in his paper "Now or Never". by using the suffix -"istan" from "Baloch"istan preceded by the first letters of "P"unjab, "A"fghania, "K"ashmir and "S"indh. The name is actually an acronym that stands for the "thirty million Muslim brethren who lived in Pakistan—by which we mean the Five Northern units of India viz: Punjab, (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan"'". The letter "i" was incorporated to ease pronunciation and forms the linguistically correct and meaningful name.