The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani were an Iranian nomadic pastoral people of antiquity.The name Alan is an Iranian dialectical form of Aryan, a common self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. Possibly related to the Massagetae, the Alans have been connected by modern historians with the Central Asian Yancai and Aorsi of Chinese and Roman sources respectively.