- published: 02 Apr 2015
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Naan (Persian: نان, Hindi: नान, Urdu: نان, Punjabi: ਨਾਨ, Pashto: نان, Uyghur: نان, Kurdish: nan) is a leavened, oven-baked flatbread. It is typical of and popular in West, Central and South Asia. Influenced by the large influx of South Asian immigrants, naan has also become popular in other parts of the world, especially in Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Europe and North America.
Originally, naan was a generic term for various flatbreads from different parts of the world. In Turkic languages, such as Uzbek, Kazakh and Uyghur, the flatbreads are known as nan. In China it is known as nang 馕. The name stems from (new) Persian, being a generic word for bread. In Burmese, flatbreads are known as nan bya (နံပြား; pronounced: [nàɴbjá]).
The earliest appearance of "naan" in English literature dates back to 1780, viz. in a travelogue of William Tooke. The original Persian word nān 'bread' (= Tajik non (нон)) is already attested in Middle-Persian / Pahlavi as n'n 'bread, food'. The form itself is either of Iranian or even Indo-Iranian origin; cognate forms include Parthian ngn, Balochi nagan, Sogdian nγn-, Pashto nəγan - "bread". The form naan has a widespread distribution, having been borrowed in a range of languages spoken in central Asia, and in the aftermath of Muslim conquests, also in South Asia, i.e., present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the surrounding regions. In these countries and regions, the generic designation "naan" refers to a kind of (in most cases) flatbread, baked according to locally adapted recipes.