India/Pakistan/Other middle eastern countries...

LamaLama wrote:Pakistan could be seen as the middle east, since Afghanistan is considered middle eastern. But india is a sub continent of Asia.

But Afghanistan isn't considered Middle Eastern. It is considered Southern Eurasian.

If you introduce an Indian/Pakistani/Bengali character you don't do their surname first like some of the Arabs. Most males are named after their father/grandfather (paternal) and females are named after their mother/grandmother (maternal) or after someone else in the family.

What year is the story set in? There was a time in India when they did not speak Hindi, it was Urdu.

Some Bengali names are not Arabic because our language is more close to Persian/Iranian than Arabic, they are deprived from Persian names such as Jahan (male/world), Javed (male/I think it means eternal, will have to ask my Mum), Parveen (female/don't know the meaning), Shabnam (female/dew), Shahnaz (fenale/king's pride or pide of the king). You can also research Mughal emperor/empresses names.

I don't know if I've said this already, but this isn't actually set in India or wherever; it's a completely made-up country for my (fantasy) story. I'm just using Pakistan/India as a base for the culture and for names etc. as the climate/geography of the island in my story is meant to be similar, so I figured it'd make sense to base culture (such as dress, architecture) on Pakistan or India. I'm using arabic names so that I can find names which sound similar (hence finding a base for names) and that I can find suitable meanings for.

However, I don't know if you'd be interested by this or not, but I'm considering writing something on Indian/Pakistani culture at some point, as I'm finding all this stuff that I've researched pretty interesting. Not sure what that could be about yet though.

Oh right. Also on clothing men and women also wear kurta which is like a shirt that can be above the knees or below.