Linguistic evidence show that Proto-Indo-Iranian (Proto-Aryan) speakers dwelled in the Eurasian steppe, south of early Uralic tribes; the stem *arya- was notably borrowed into the Pre-Saami language as *orja-, at the origin of oarji ('southwest') and årjel ('Southerner').

The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family, predominantly spoken in the geographical subregion of Southern Asia.They have more than 1.5 billion speakers, stretching from Europe (), Kurdistan (Kurdish and Zaza–Gorani) and the Caucasus eastward to …