Aryans

Because raciss!! and Hitler!! people have scoffed at the idea that the proto-Indo-Europeans may have called themselves Aryans.  However, quietly, it's come back around.  Quoting from the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, :

FREEMAN
*h₄erós ~ *h₄erios [ed. I couldn't find one of the diacritics in my character map that the actual entry shows on the i] 'member of one's own (ethnic) group, peer, freeman; (Indo-Iranian) Aryan'. [IEW67 (*ario-?); Wat 3 (*aryo-); GI 657 (*ar(y)o-); BK 387 (*har-/hər-), 429 (*ar-/ər-)]/ From *h₄erós comes Hit ara- 'member of one's own group, peer, companion, friend', with further derivatives arawa- 'free from', arawahh- 'set free from', arawanni- 'free; freeman', Lycian arawa- 'free (from)', arus- 'citizens'; from *h₄erios: OIr aire 'freeman (whether commoner or noble); noble (as distinct from commoner)' (the latter meaning nmay be rather from *prios, a derivative of 'first'; the Gaulish personal names with Ario-, eg., Ario-manus, presumably contain 'noble'), Av airya- 'Aryan', (i.e., 'Iranian' in the larger sense), OPers ariya- 'Aryan', Iran Alani (< *aryana) (the name of an Iranian group whose descendants are the Ossetes, one of whose subdivisions is the Iron [< *aryana-]), *aryanam (gen. pl.) 'of the Aryans' (>MPers Iran), OInd ari- 'attached to, faithful; a faithful devoted person; ± kinsman' (and distinct from the homophonous ari- 'enemy'), arya- 'kind, favorable; attached to, true, devoted'; arya- 'Aryan; one who is faithful to the Vedic religion'. From *h₄er- 'put together'. Oswald Szemerenyi's suggestion that it derives from an Ugaritic word meaning 'kinsman' is hardly compelling.

Clearly supposed in the original meaning is an emphasis on in-group status as distinguished from the status of the outsider, particular those outsiders forcibly incorporated into the group as slaves. In Anatolian the base word has come to emphasize the personal relationship between individuals while the derivatives continue the more general focus on social status, as remains the case in Old Irish. In Indo-Iranian, presumably because the unfree were typically captives taken from other (ethnic) groups, the word has taken on a more purely ethnic meaning. Less likely, but still possible, is the assumption that this word was originally an ethnonym, the self-designation of (at least parts of) the Indo-European people, that was revalued as a term of social status.

An independent derivative of the same verbal root is *h_aero/eh_a- 'fitting' seen in Hit ara '(what is) fitting, right proper, fas', natta ara 'it is not right, it is forbidden/illegal, nefas', Av arəm'fittingly, enough', armaiti (< *ara-mati-) 'right thought', OInd aram 'fittingly, enough', ara-mati 'right thought, devotion', evara 'truly fitting, just right'.

See also Booty; Friend, Kinship; Master; People; Physical Anthropology [D.Q.A.]