Karian

Karian is a term that can refer to several related topics. In historical contexts, Karian is an alternate transliteration of Carian, denoting the Carian people and their language, who inhabited the region of Caria in southwestern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) during the first millennium BCE. The Carian language, part of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family, is known from a limited corpus of inscriptions and loanwords; it coexisted with Greek in many city-states and was gradually supplanted by Greek and later languages. The region's cities, including Halicarnassus and Knidos, interacted with Achaemenid Persia and later Hellenistic kingdoms, shaping a distinctive cultural blend. In modern scholarship, the ethnonym and language are typically referred to as Carian, but older or transliteration-sensitive sources sometimes render it as Karian.

In onomastics, Karian is used as a personal name or surname in some cultures, though it remains relatively uncommon. The form may arise independently from names like Karin or Kana in different language areas and can also reflect the historical association with Caria.

In contemporary use, Karian may appear in fiction or media as a place name or character name, independent of its historical roots.

See also Carian, Caria.