Name of Iran

In the Western world, Persia (or one of its cognates) was historically the common name used for Iran. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah officially asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran, the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence. Subsequently, the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. In 1959, the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah's son, announced that both "Persia" and "Iran" could be used interchangeably, in formal correspondence. However, the issue is still debated among Iranians. Another term used for Iran by the medieval scholars such as Al-Biruni is Xuniras (from Avestan Xvaniraθa-, probably meaning ‘self-made, not resting on anything else’), "which is the center of the world, [...] and it is the one wherein we are, and the kings called it the Iranian realm."

Etymology of Iran
The name "Iran" is first attested in the Avesta as airyānąm (the text of which is composed in Avestan, an old Iranian language spoken in the northeastern part of Greater Iran, or in what are now Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan).

It reappears in the Achaemenid period where the Elamite version of the Behistun Inscription twice mentions Ahura Mazda as nap harriyanam "the god of the Iranians".

The Modern Persian word Īrān (ایران) derives immediately from Middle Persian Ērān (Pahlavi spelling: ʼyrʼn), attested in a third century AD inscription that accompanies the investiture relief of the first Sassanid king Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam. In this inscription, the king's Middle Persian appellation is ardašīr šāhān šāh ērān in the Parthian language inscription that accompanies the Middle Persian one. The king is also titled ardašīr šāhān šāh aryān (Pahlavi: ... ʼryʼn) both meaning king of kings of the Aryans.

The gentilic ēr- and ary- in ērān and aryān derives from Old Iranian *arya- ([Old Persian] airya-, Avestan airiia-, etc.), meaning "Aryan", in the sense of "of the Iranians". This term is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition, and it seems "very likely" that in Ardashir's inscription ērān still retained this meaning, denoting the people rather than the empire.

Notwithstanding this inscriptional use of ērān to refer to the Iranian peoples, the use of ērān to refer to the empire (and the antonymic anērān to refer to the Roman territories) is also attested by the early Sassanid period. Both ērān and anērān appear in 3rd century calendrical text written by Mani. In an inscription of Ardashir's son and immediate successor, Shapur I "apparently includes in Ērān regions such as Armenia and the Caucasus which were not inhabited predominantly by Iranians". In Kartir's inscriptions (written thirty years after Shapur's), the high priest includes the same regions (together with Georgia, Albania, Syria and the Pontus) in his list of provinces of the antonymic Anērān. Ērān also features in the names of the towns founded by Sassanid dynasts, for instance in Ērān-xwarrah-šābuhr "Glory of Ērān (of) Shapur". It also appears in the titles of government officers, such as in Ērān-āmārgar "Accountant-General (of) Ērān" or Ērān-dibirbed "Chief Scribe (of) Ērān".

The term Iranian appears in ancient texts with diverse variations. This includes Arioi (Herodotus), Arianē (Eratosthenes apud Strabo), áreion (Eudemus of Rhodes apud Damascius), Arianoi (Diodorus Siculus) in Greek and Ari in Armenian; those, in turn, come from the Iranian forms: ariya in Old Persian, airya in Avestan, ariao in Bactrian, ary in Parthian and ēr in Middle Persian.

Etymology of Persia


The Greeks (who had previously tended to use names related to "Median") began to use adjectives such as,   or   in the fifth century BC to refer to Cyrus the Great's empire (a word understood to mean "country"). Such words were taken from the Old Persian Pārsa – the name of the people from whom Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty emerged and over whom he first ruled (before he inherited or conquered other Iranian Kingdoms). The Pars tribe gave its name to the region where they lived (the modern day province is called Fars/Pars), but the province in ancient times was smaller than its current area. In Latin, the name for the whole empire was Persia, while the Iranians knew it as Iran or Iranshahr.

In the later parts of the Bible, where this kingdom is frequently mentioned (Books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah), it is called Paras, or sometimes Paras u Madai (פרס ומדי), ("Persia and Media"). The Arabs likewise referred to Iran and the Persian (Sassanian) Empire as Bilād Fāris (بلاد فارس), in other words "Lands of Persia", which would become the popular name for the region in Muslim literature. They also used Bilād Ajam (بلاد عجم) as an equivalent or synonym to "Persia". The Turks also used this term, but adapted to Iranian (specifically, Persian) language form as "Bilad (Belaad) e Ajam".

A Greek folk etymology connected the name to Perseus, a legendary character in Greek mythology. Herodotus recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took the name. Apparently, the Persians themselves knew the story, as Xerxes I tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, but ultimately failed to do so.

Xuniras
In the Iranian tradition, the world is divided into seven circular regions, or karshvars, separated from one another by forests, mountains, or water. Six of those regions flank a central one called Xvaniraθa- in Avesta and Xuniras in New Persian, which probably means ‘self-made, not resting on anything else’. It was equal in size to all the rest combined and surpassed them in prosperity and fortune. Originally, only Xuniras was inhabited by humans, which also hosted the "Iranian home" (Airyō.šayana- in the Avestan). But in the later tradition, that is, from about 620, Xuniras came to be the same as Iran itself, with known countries such as the Roman Empire and China surrounding it. The Abu-Mansuri Shahnameh describes Xuniras as such: "(and) the seventh, which is the center of the world, Xuniras-e bāmi (splendid Xuniras), and it is the one wherein we are, and the kings called it the Iranian realm/Ērānšahr." Another scheme of the seven regions of the world is reported by Abu Rayhan Biruni, who similarly arranges known nations into six connectedcircles surrounding the central Ērānšahr.

Two names in the West
The exonym Persia was the official name of Iran in the Western world before March 1935, but the Iranian peoples inside their country since the time of Zoroaster (probably circa 1000 BC), or even before, have called their country Arya, Iran, Iranshahr, Iranzamin (Land of Iran), Aryānām (the equivalent of Iran in the proto-Iranian language) or its equivalents. The term Arya has been used by the Iranian people, as well as by the rulers and emperors of Iran, from the time of the Avesta. Evidently from the time of the Sassanids (226–651 CE) Iranians have called it Iran, meaning the "Land of the Aryans" and Iranshahr. In Middle Persian sources, the name Arya and Iran is used for the pre-Sassanid Iranian empires as well as the Sassanid empire. As an example, the use of the name "Iran" for Achaemenids in the Middle Persian book of Arda Viraf refers to the invasion of Iran by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. The Proto-Iranian term for Iran is reconstructed as *Aryānām (the genitive plural of the word *Arya); the Avestan equivalent is Airyanem (as in Airyanem Vaejah). The internal preference for "Iran" was noted in some Western reference books (e.g. the Harmsworth Encyclopaedia, circa 1907, entry for Iran: "The name is now the official designation of Persia.") but for international purposes, Persia was the norm.

In the mid 1930s, the ruler of the country, Reza Shah Pahlavi, moved towards formalising the name Iran instead of Persia for all purposes. In the British House of Commons the move was reported upon by the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as follows:

"On the 25th December [1934] the Persian Ministry for Foreign Affairs addressed a circular memorandum to the Foreign Diplomatic Missions in Tehran requesting that the terms "Iran" and "Iranian" might be used in official correspondence and conversation as from the next 21st March, instead of the words "Persia" and "Persian" hitherto in current use. His Majesty's Minister in Tehran has been instructed to accede to this request."

The decree of Reza Shah Pahlavi affecting nomenclature duly took effect on 21 March 1935.

To avoid confusion between the two neighboring countries of Iran and Iraq, which were both involved in WWII and occupied by the Allies, Winston Churchill requested from the Iranian government during the Tehran Conference for the old and distinct name "Persia to be used by the United Nations [i.e., the Allies] for the duration of the common War". His request was approved immediately by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. The Americans, however, continued using Iran as they then had little involvement in Iraq to cause any such confusion.

In the summer of 1959, following concerns that the native name had, as Mohammad Ali Foroughi put it, "turned a known into an unknown", a committee was formed, led by noted scholar Ehsan Yarshater, to consider the issue again. They recommended a reversal of the 1935 decision, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi approved this. However, the implementation of the proposal was weak, simply allowing Persia and Iran to be used interchangeably. Today, both terms are common; Persia mostly in historical and cultural contexts, "Iran" mostly in political contexts.

In recent years most exhibitions of Persian history, culture and art in the world have used the exonym Persia (e.g., "Forgotten Empire; Ancient Persia", British Museum; "7000 Years of Persian Art", Vienna, Berlin; and "Persia; Thirty Centuries of Culture and Art", Amsterdam). In 2006, the largest collection of historical maps of Iran, entitled Historical Maps of Persia, was published in the Netherlands.

Recent debate
In the 1980s, Professor Ehsan Yarshater (editor of the Encyclopædia Iranica) started to publish articles on this matter (in both English and Persian) in Rahavard Quarterly, Pars Monthly, Iranian Studies Journal, etc. After him, a few Iranian scholars and researchers such as Prof. Kazem Abhary, and Prof. Jalal Matini followed the issue. Several times since then, Iranian magazines and websites have published articles from those who agree or disagree with usage of Persia and Persian in English.

There are many Iranians in the West who prefer Persia and Persian as the English names for the country and nationality, similar to the usage of La Perse/persan in French. According to Hooman Majd, the popularity of the term Persia among the Iranian diaspora stems from the fact that Persia' connotes a glorious past they would like to be identified with, while 'Iran' since 1979 revolution… says nothing to the world but Islamic fundamentalism."

Official names
Since 1 April 1979, the official name of the Iranian state is Jomhuri-ye Eslâmi-ye Irân, which is generally translated as the Islamic Republic of Iran in English.

Other official names were Dowlat-e Aliyye-ye Irân meaning the Sublime State of Persia and Kešvar-e Šâhanšâhi-ye Irân  meaning Imperial State of Persia and the Imperial State of Iran after 1935.