# Pakistan

> English word · Proper noun · IPA /ˌpɑːkɪˈstɑːn/ · frequency rank #2,748

## Definitions
1. A country in South Asia. Official name: Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Capital: Islamabad.

## Etymology
Borrowed from Urdu پاکستان (pākistān, “Land of the Holy”), from پاک (pāk, “pure, holy, immaculate, chaste, undefiled”) and Classical Persian ـستان (-stān,-istān, “-stan”). The word was coined by Pakistani politician Chuhdary Rahmat Ali in 1933, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never as an acronym of the names of the "Muslim homelands" of western India—Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Balochistan. Absent from said acronym (which may possibly be a backronym) is the letter ⟨i⟩, which is sometimes erroneously said to stand for the Indus, but it is in fact epenthetic.

## Easily confused with
- **Parisian** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/pakistan-vs-parisian)
- **Pakistani** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/pakistan-vs-pakistani)

## Common misspellings (12)
`apkistan`, `paikstan`, `pakisatn`, `pakisstan`, `pakistann`, `pakistna`, `pakisttan`, `pakitsan`, `pakkistan`, `paksitan`, `pkaistan`, `ppakistan`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/pakistan