Old Norse: arjosteʀ , 'foremost, most
distinguished'.[35][37][38]The term h₂er(y)ós may derive from the PIE verbal root h₂er- ,
meaning 'to put together'.[39][28] Oswald Szemerényi has also argued
that the stem could be a Near-Eastern loanword from
the Ugaritic ary ('kinsmen'),[40] although J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q.
Adams find this proposition "hardly compelling".[28] According to them,
the original PIE meaning had a clear emphasis on the in-group status of
the "freemen" as distinguished from that of outsiders, particularly
those captured and incorporated into the group as slaves. In Anatolia,
the base word has come to emphasize personal relationship, whereas it
took a more ethnic meaning among Indo-Iranians, presumably because
most of the unfree (* anarya ) who lived among them were captives
from other ethnic groups.[28]
Historical usage
Proto-Indo-Iranians
The term arya was used by Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers to designate
themselves as an ethnocultural group, encompassing those who spoke
the language and followed the religion of the Aryas (Indo-Iranians) , as
distinguished from the nearby outsiders known as the Anarya ('non-
Arya').[3][25][24] Indo-Iranians ( Aryas ) are generally associated with
the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BCE), named after the Sintashta
archaeological site in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia.[25][41] 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 loanword took the
meaning 'slave' in other Finno-Permic languages, suggesting conflictual