The Kūrd are a Brahui tribe of

Balochistan Balochistan ( ; , ), also spelled as Baluchistan or Baluchestan, is a historical region in West and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. This arid region o ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

. They belong to the Sarawan group and speak the Dravidian

Brahui language Brahui ( ; ; also romanised as Brahvi or Brohi) is a Dravidian language, spoken by the Brahui people, Brahui primarily in central areas (Brahuistan) of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, Pakistan, Balochistan; with smaller communities of spea ...

.. Not all Brahui tribes speak Brahui. Josef Elfenbein contends that they are among the first Brahui-speakers to have come in contact with outsiders in the former Khanate of Kalat, as they appear in a certain oral tradition of the Persian-speaking Dehwars of Mastung District, where they are known as ''Kūrdgalla'' 'Kurd-people'. This term is likely to have been the source of Kūrdgāl, the name by which the Kūrd are known to the Baloch and the

Jats The Jat people (, ), also spelt Jaat and Jatt, are a traditionally agricultural community in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, many Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in ...

, among whom it has been reinterpreted as meaning "speaker of ''Kūrd''. A proposed connection with the

Kurds Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...

of Western Asia has been dismissed by Elfenbein as

folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

that is implausible on account of the different vowels (long ''ū'' for the Brahui tribe vs. short ''u'' for the other).

References

Bibliography

* * {{Brahui tribes Brahui tribes