Etymology

The name Pakistan means literally land abounding in the pure or land in which the pure abound, in Urdu and Persian. It references the word Pak, meaning pure in Persian and Pashto. The suffix "stân" or "istân" is from Persian, and means place abounding in or place where anything abounds.

The name of the country was coined in 1933 by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in a pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym ("thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKISTAN"), and referring to the names of the five northern regions of the British Raj: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.