Kîne em?

Title: Who are we?

The name Kurdistan goes back to the Sumerian word kur, which meant something like montain more than 5,000 years ago. The suffix ti stood for affiliation. The word kurti then had the meaning of 'mountain tribe' or 'mountain people'.

The Luwians, a people settling in ancient Anatolia about 3,000 years ago during late Bronze Age or Hittite, called Kurdistan Gondwana, which meant 'land of the villages' in their language. In Kurdish, 'gund' is still the word for village.
Kurdish Kurmanji: gund or gond - Kurdish Sorani: گوند  (gund/gond)

During the Bronze Age, Kurds were also called Nairi, which meant as much as 'people by the river' or dwellers in Armenian highlands, roughly corresponding to the Wan and Hekarî provinces of Turkish-colonized Kurdistan.

In the Middle Ages under the reign of the Arab sultanates the Kurdish area were referred to as beled ekrad.
Arabic script: بلد أكرد (the land of the Kurds)

The Sultanate of Rum who spoke Persian were the first who used the word 'Kurdistan', lands of the Kurds, in their official communiquées.

During the Ottoman Empire, the sultans also called the settlements area of the Kurds' Kurdistan. Until the twenties of the last century this was a generally used name.

After 1925 the existence of the Kurds was denied, particularly in Turkey. They referred us 'Turkish Kurd', 'terrorist', 'rebel' et cetera. The Turkish policy aimed at assimilating Kurds in Turkey, which has been brutally succeed by forgotten massacres. They gave them a choice to Turkifizing themselves or a death, but they miserably failed to Turkifizing the Kurds in Turkey.
Turkification (Turkish: Türkleşme when voluntary and Türkleştirme involuntary)