The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.

The various forms of Alan — Greek: Αλανοί, Αλαννοί; Chinese: 阿蘭聊 Alanliao (Pinyin) in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan (Pinyin) in the 3rd century — and Iron (a self-designation of the Alans' modern Ossetian descendants, indicating early tribal self-designation) are Iranian dialectical forms of Aryan. These and other variants of Aryan (such as Iran), were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, the common ancestors of the Indo-Aryans and Iranian peoples to whom the Alans belonged.

The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As, and Os (Bulgarian Uzi, Hungarian Jász, Russian Jasy, Georgian Osi). It is this name that is the root of the modern Ossetian.

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Alan Parsons (born 20 December 1948) is a British audio engineer, musician, and record producer. He was involved with the production of several significant albums, including The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon for which Pink Floyd credit him as an important contributor. Parsons' own group, The Alan Parsons Project, as well as his subsequent solo recordings, have also been successful commercially.

In October 1967, at age 18, Parsons went to work as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios, where he earned his first credit on the LP Abbey Road. He became a regular there, engineering such projects as Paul McCartney's Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, five albums by The Hollies, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, for which he received his first Grammy Award nomination. He was known for doing more than what would normally be considered the scope of a recording engineer’s duties.^{[citation needed]}He considered himself to be a recording director, likening his contribution to recordings to what Stanley Kubrick contributed to film.^{[citation needed]} This is apparent in his work with Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat", where Parsons added the saxophone part and transformed the original folk concept into the jazz-influenced ballad that put Al Stewart onto the charts.^{[citation needed]} It is also heard in Parsons' influence on the Hollies' "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" and "The Air That I Breathe", sharp departures from their popular 1960s hits "Stay", "Just One Look", "Stop! Stop! Stop!" or "Bus Stop".^{[citation needed]} Parsons was also known to have swapped shifts during the engineering of The Dark Side of the Moon so he could work entirely on the project.^{[citation needed]}

Alan Gordon Partridge OBE (Honour Removed) is a fictional radio and television presenter portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for the BBC Radio 4 programme On The Hour. A parody of both sports commentators and chat show presenters, among others, the character has appeared in two radio series, three television series and numerous TV and radio specials, including appearances on BBC's Comic Relief, which have followed the rise and fall of his career.

Whereas many of his personality defects are apparent in his appearances in shows such as The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it is largely from I'm Alan Partridge onwards that his creators began to explore his personality in depth, and most of the observations that follow originated in that show.

Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his work in children's fantasy and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore into its plot. It was followed by a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), although Garner never produced the envisioned third part of the trilogy. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).