The Zazas (also known as Kird, Kirmanc or Dimili) are a people in eastern Turkey who traditionally speak the Zaza language, a western Iranian language written in the Latin script. Their heartland consists of Tunceli and Bingöl provinces and parts of Elazığ, Erzincan and Diyarbakır provinces. Zazas generally consider themselves Kurds, and are often described as Zaza Kurds by scholars. Etymology and naming According to Encyclopædia Iranica the endonym Dimlī or Dīmla was derived from Daylam region in Northern Iran, and appears in Armenian historical records as delmik, dlmik, which was proposed to be derived from Middle Iranian *dēlmīk meaning Daylamite. Among their neighbors the people are known mainly as Zāzā, which meant “stutterer” and was used as a pejorative. Hadank and Mckenzie attribute relative abundance of sibilants and affricates in Zaza language to explain the semantic etymology of the name. History Origins and early history Linguistic evidence put the urheimat of the Zaza language to Northern Iran, especially around the southern Caspian region due to the similarities between Zaza, Talysh, Gilaki and Mazanderani languages. The etymology of the endonym Dimlī and the historical records of migration from Daylam to Central Anatolia in Armenian sources are also cited as an evidence of Daylamite origins of the Zaza people. Academics propose that this migration event happened in 10th to 12th centuries AD. However, a study from 2005 does not support the Northern Iranian theory and rather proposes a closer link between Kurdish and Zaza-speakers compared to Northern Iranian populations. Kurmanji-speaking Kurds and Zazas have for centuries lived in the same areas in Anatolia. Arakelova states that Zazas had not claimed a separate ethnic identity from Kurds and were considered a part of the Kurds by outsiders through history, despite "having a distinct national identity and ethnic consciousness". The Zaza minstrel tradition goes back to the medieval period, when Zaza-speaking bards composed works both in their mother tongue and in Turkish. Modern period The earliest surviving literary works in the Zaza language are two poems with identical titles, Mawlūd, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1920s and 1930s, Zazas played a key role in the rise of Kurdish nationalism with their rebellions against the Ottoman Empire and later the Republic of Turkey. Zazas participated in the Koçgiri rebellion in 1920, and during the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925, the Zaza Sheikh Said and his supporters rebelled against