<cite>[Trevor Culley](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/o9whob/what_is_the_origins_of_kurdish_people/)</cite> > There are pretty consistent references to conflict between the powers of Mesopotamia and the Kardu all through the [[Bronze Age]], and if we accept that Kardu and Urartu are related names, then it continues straight to the mid 8th century BCE. Fast forward another few centuries and we get pretty consistent references to a people with a similar name in the same region all through the Greek and Roman periods. Xenophon called the Karduchoi, later Greek and Roman sources called them Karduene, and Armenians called them "Korduk." > > All of this is great history, and there was clearly a group with a name like Kardu in the region of modern northwest Kurdistan/southeast Turkey. The thing is, the modern Kurds don't necessarily connect with those people as directly as the names might make it seem. Kurdish language and culture is very distinctly Iranian. By that I don't mean ties to the modern nation called Iran, but the large linguistic/cultural group that influences the Islamic Republic and all of its neighbors. Iranian language and identity didn't arrive in what is now western Iran until the 9th century BCE (spreading with migrants from Central Asia), so the Kardu of 3000-800 BCE were definitely not Iranian. > > Iranians would have first come to the Iranian portion of Kurdistan around 900, but wouldn't have reached the land of Kardu until the late 7th century when the Median Empire helped Babylon overthrow the Assyrians. The Medes were an Iranian group that conquered northern [[Assyria]] and most of western Anatolia, ie all of modern Kurdistan. Today, many Kurds claim that they are descended from the Medes. That's not impossible, but there are more Iranian developments around the same time. In 550 BCE, [[Cyrus the Great of Persia]] conquered his Median overlords and founded the Persian Empire. By 521, an Iranian group called the Sagartians were in the area that is now Iraqi Kurdistan. In the 3rd century BCE, an Iranian tribe called the Kurtians fought with the Medes against the Seleukid Empire. These Kurtians were Iranian and had no known connection to the Kardu. By some theories, these Kurtians might be the actual origin point for the word "Kurds."