How many countries have names that end in "stan"?

Seven countries have English names that end in “stan”: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The ending comes from a Persian suffix meaning “place of” or “land of.” It appears especially often across Central and South Asia, where Persian and related Iranian languages influenced historical place-names. Five of the seven countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—are commonly grouped as Central Asia; Afghanistan and Pakistan lie farther south.

A frequent mistake is counting every region or city whose name ends in “stan.” Balochistan, Kurdistan, Rajasthan, and Tatarstan are examples of regions or administrative areas, not additional sovereign countries. Historical names such as Turkestan also do not add to the modern country count.

The answer assumes standard English country names and present-day sovereign states. Under that normal quiz convention, the count is seven. The countries differ greatly in geography, languages, and political history, despite sharing the same familiar ending.