Etymology of Tibet
Origin and history of the term "Tibet" / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Tibet" is a term for the major elevated plateau in Central Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is today mostly under the sovereignty of the People's Republic of China, primarily administered as the Tibet Autonomous Region besides (depending on the geographic definition of the term) adjacent parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan.
The English name is adopted from Modern Latin Tibetum, and is shared by all western languages. However, the term "Tibet" is subject to many definitions and controversy over its function and territorial claims. Tibetan and Chinese do not have an equivalent to the English term Tibet. Names for the region loosely corresponding to the Tibetan Plateau include the Standard Tibetan endonyms Bod (Bö) for "Greater Tibet" and Ü-Tsang (དབུས་གཙང་ Wü-Tsang; 烏思藏; Wūsīzàng) for "Central Tibet", and the Chinese terms Tǔbō or Tǔfān (吐蕃) for the historical Tibetan Empire and Xīzàng (西藏; "Western Tsang") for the territory of the Tibet Autonomous Region.