Persia to Iran

Two names for one country

The region now called Iran was traditionally known as Persia, with roots in the Achaemenian empire that began in 550 BCE.^[3] “Persia” was the Greeks’ word for Cyrus the Great’s empire, taken from Parsa, the name of the people he came from, and so it is an exonym, a name given from outside.^[1]

Inside the country, Iran had long been used. It comes from the Avestan airyānąm, and by the 4th century CE it was being used in writing; by the 19th century some Western writers noted that the people themselves preferred it.^[1]

The request of 1935

On the Persian New Year, 21 March 1935, Reza Shah announced that the country would formally be called Iran abroad, not Persia, and asked foreign governments to use the name.^[2][1][4] One story, reported by the Iran Chamber Society, credits the idea to Iran’s ambassador in Germany, where friends persuaded him that a country freed from British and Russian interference should go by its own name.^[4]

Historians and critics have argued that Reza Shah’s vision leaned on a glorified “Land of the Aryans” at a time when the term was fashionable in eugenics.^[1] Not every government complied: during the Second World War Britain, which occupied the country, kept saying Persia, worried that Iran was too easily confused with Iraq.^[1]

Persia, still

In 1959 Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah, announced that Iran and Persia could both be used in formal correspondence. Iran has nonetheless won out, and since 1979 the official name has been the Islamic Republic of Iran. Persian survives for the language and for the country’s food, art and poetry.^[1]