and > however, since the late 20th century, a growing number of scholars have rejected both the aryan invasion hypothesis and the use of the term aryan as a racial designation, suggesting that the sanskrit term arya (noble or distinguished), the linguistic root of the word, was actually a social rather than an ethnic epithet. rather, the term is used strictly in a linguistic sense, in recognition of the influence that the language of the ancient northern migrants had on the development of the indo-european languages of south asia. in the 19th century aryan was used as a synonym for indo-european and also, more restrictively, to refer to the indo-iranian languages. it is now used in linguistics only in the sense of the term indo-aryan languages, a branch of the larger indo-european language family.
Romania