page_title: Terms for Syriac Christians
section_title: Modern history
hierarchical_section_title: Terms for Syriac Christians / Modern history
caption_attribution_description: العربية: بلدة القوش في العراق قرب مدينة الموصل في محافظة نينوى English: Village Alqosh in Iraq, near Mosul Polski: Miejscowość Alkosz w Iraku, koło Mosulu
context_page_description: Syriac Christians are an ethnoreligious grouping of various ethnic communities of indigenous Semitic and often Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christian people of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Syriac Christians advocate different terms for ethnic self-designation. Syriac Christians from the Middle East are theologically and culturally closely related to, but should not be confused with, the Saint Thomas Christians from India, whose ties to Syriac Christians were the result of trade links and migration by Assyrian Christians from Mesopotamia and the Middle East mostly around the 9th century.
  Historically, the three ethnic names used for those who would become Syriac Christians were extant before the advent of Christianity: Assyrian, referring to the land and people of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, Aramean, referring to the people of Aram in The Levant, and Syrian/Syriac, originally being used specifically as an Indo-European corruption of Assyrian, but from the late 4th century BC, being applied by the Seleucid Greeks to the Arameans of The Levant.
context_section_description: The controversy is not restricted to exonyms like English "Assyrian" vs. "Aramean", but also applies to self-designation in Neo-Aramaic, the "Aramean" faction from Turkey and Syria endorses both Sūryāyē (ܣܘܪܝܝܐ) and Ārāmayē (ܐܪܡܝܐ), while the "Assyrian" faction from Iraq, Iran, north east Syria and southeast Turkey insists on Āṯūrāyē (ܐܬܘܪܝܐ) but also accepts Sūryāyē (ܣܘܪܝܝܐ).
caption: Alqosh, located in the midst of a contemporary Assyrian community.
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