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The proximity between Roman Syria and Mesopotamia in the 1st century AD, Alain Manesson Mallet, 1683. As early as the 8th century BC Luwian and Cilician subject rulers referred to their Assyrian overlords as Syrian, a western Indo-European corruption of the original term Assyrian.
Another difference between the two related communities is that the Assyrian identity in Syria (as in Iraq) is usually seen as inseparable from being Christian and even adhering to specific churches. In contrast, the Aramean identity can also encompass Muslim Arameans, as in the case of the Arameans of Jubb'adin and the pre- Syrian civil war ...
The terms "Syriac", "Chaldean" and "Chaldo-Assyrian" can be used to describe ethnic Assyrians by their religious affiliation, and indeed the terms "Syriac" and "Syrian" are much later derivatives of the original "Assyrian", and historically, geographically and ethnically originally meant Assyrian (see Name of Syria).
In recent works, Assyrian-American historian Sargon Donabed has pointed out that parishes in the US were originally using Assyrian designations in their official English names, also noting that in some cases those designations were later changed to Syrian and then to Syriac, while several other parishes still continue to use Assyrian designations.
In addition, the Syrian Arab Republic is home to many ethnicities, including Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Kurds, and Turkmens, and is thus not an exclusively Arab nation. The Syriac Orthodox Church was previously known as the Syrian Orthodox Church until a Holy Synod in 2000 voted to change it to Syriac, thus distinguishing from the Arabs.
The Ismailis are an even smaller sect that originated in Asia. Many Armenian and Assyrian Christians fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide and the Assyrian genocide and settled in Syria. There are also roughly 500,000 Palestinians, who are mostly descendants of refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab War.
Some scholars in the past rejected the theory of 'Syrian' being derived from 'Assyrian' as "naive" and based purely on onomastic similarity in Indo-European languages, [86] until the inscription identified the origins of this derivation. [84] [85] In Classical Greek usage, terms Syria and Assyria were used interchangeably.
Historical use of the term Syria can be divided into three periods. The first period, attested from the 8th century BCE, reflects the original Luwian and Cilician use of the term Syria as a clear synonym for Assyria, in reference to the empire of Assyria, rather than modern Syria (the historically Assyrian northeast aside) which was known as Aramea and Eber-Nari at that time, terms never ...