word meaning "like a Turk". While formerly the dominant etymology in modern scholarship, this mixed Turkic-Persian derivation is now viewed as incorrect. Today the terms are usually restricted to two Turkic groups: the Turkmen people of Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Central Asia and Iran, and the Turkomans of Iraq and Syria. Origins Türkmens were mentioned near the end of the 10th century A.D in Islamic literature by the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi in Ahsan Al-Taqasim Fi Ma'rifat Al-Aqalim. In his work, which was completed in 987 A.D, al-Muqaddasi writes about Turkmens twice while depicting the region as the frontier of the Muslim possessions in Central Asia. Earlier references to Türkmen might be trwkkmˀn (if not trkwmˀn "translator"), mentioned in an 8th-century Sogdian letter and 特拘夢 Tejumeng (< MC ZS *dək̚-kɨo-mɨuŋH), another name of Sogdia, besides Suyi 粟弋 and Sute 粟特, according to the Chinese encyclopedia Tongdian. However, even if 特拘夢 might have transcribed Türkmen, these "Türkmens" might be Karluks instead of modern Türkmens' Oghuz-speaking ancestors; as Türkmen might be the Karluks' equivalent of the Göktürks' political term Kök Türk. Zuev (1960) links the tribal name 餘沒渾 Yumeihun (< MC *iʷо-muət-хuən) in Tang Huiyao to the name Yomut of a modern Turkmen clan. Towards the end of the 11th century, in Divânü Lügat'it-Türk (Compendium of the Turkic Dialects), Mahmud Kashgari uses "Türkmen" synonymously with "Oğuz". He describes Oghuz as a Turkic tribe and says that Oghuz and Karluks were both known as Turkmens. The origins of the Turkic peoples has been a topic of much discussion, but evidence point either to a homeland in South Central Siberia, close to the Altai Mountains and Lake Baikal or further East in Mongolia. Archaeogenetic, historical and linguistic evidence suggests that the earliest Turkic peoples were "within or close to the Northeast Asian genepool" but made up of multiple heterogeneous groups, with their exact location of their homeland remains disputed. The genetic and historical evidence suggests that the early Turkic peoples, including the ancestors of the Turkmen people - Oghuz Turks, harbored both West-Eurasian and Northeast Asian ancestry and were located in and around the Altai region and western Mongolia. Later medieval Turkic groups exhibited a wide range of both West-Eurasian and East Asian physical appearances and genetic origins, in part through long-term contact with neighboring Iranian and Mongolic peoples. Before the formation of the Turkmen ethnicity, the Oghuz Turks inhabited parts of Transoxiana, the