-stan "koborsthan" ( "") "graveyard/cemetery", known as "Qabaristan" as (). Originally an independent noun, this morpheme evolved into a suffix by virtue of appearing frequently as the last part in nominal compounds. It is of Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-European origin: It is cognate with Sanskrit "" (Devanagari: ), meaning "the act of standing", from which many further meanings derive, including "place, location; abode, dwelling", and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo-Iranian . The Proto-Indo-European root from which this noun is derived is (older reconstruction ) "to stand" (or "to stand up, to step (somewhere), to position (oneself)"), which is also the source of
Romanian name and French "-esque", but its pervasiveness in Romanian may have come from Slavic influence, by way of Old Slavonic -ьskъ (which is in fact cognate to Latin "-iscum" via Proto-Indo-European). Another common derivation was to append the suffix "-eanu" or the simpler forms "-anu" and "-an" to the name of a place, river, village, or region, e.g. "Ardeleanu" (from "Ardeal"), "Moldoveanu" (from "Moldova"), "Mureșanu" (from "Mureș"), "Sadoveanu" etc. (cognate to Italian "-(i)ano"). They may indicate a country or ethnic origin (e.g. "Grecu" - from Greece, "Ungureanu" - from Hungary, "Rusu" - from Russia). The suffix "-cea" (as in "Mihalcea", "Grigorcea",