Iran


Disclaimer	Contact Us	Link With Us

Sponsored Links:

Re-introducing the name "Iran"

In 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi announced that all Western countries should use the name of "Iran" in their languages too. Opponents claim that this act brought cultural damage to the country and separated Iran from its past in the West, and caused many people to confuse it with Iraq (an Arab state west of Iran). During World War II, in fact, Winston hurchill ordered that the name "Persia" be used for all government documents so as to avoid this confusion. For many westerners, "Persia" became a dead empire that does not exist anymore. Members of the Persian intelligentsia were not happy with this decree either, because of the pro-Nazi
incentive behind it.[1]
After Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the Nazi Economics minister, commented on the Aryan origin of Persians, Reza Shah's ambassador in Germany encouraged him to issue the above mentioned decree asking all foreign delegates to use the word "Iran" (meaning "Land of the Aryans") instead of "Persia" in formal correspondence.[2]

As the New York Times explained at the time, "At the suggestion of the Persian Legation in Berlin, the Tehran government, on the Persian New Year, March 21, 1935, substituted Iran for Persia as the official name of the country. In its decision it was influenced by the Nazi revival of interest in the various Aryan races, cradled in ancient Persia. As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs set forth in its memorandum on the subject, 'Perse,' the French designation of Persia, connoted the weakness and tottering independence of the country in the nineteenth
century, when it was the chessboard of European imperialistic rivalry. 'Iran,' by contrast, conjured up memories of the vigor and splendor of its historic past."[3]

The defenders of this name point out that the designation Iran was used by the Greek historian Eratosthenes and derives from the old Persian word ariya, akin to the Sanskrit Aryavarta. The Sassanids also called their empire Ēran-shahr ("empire of the Iranians") or Ēran-zamin ("land of the Iranians"). Subsequent and modern usage derives from this precedent.[4]

Another perspective as to why some Iranians may have advocated Reza Shah Pahlavi recommendation in using the word Iran as oppose to Persia was to create a sense of national unity among the people in Iran. In contrast to political debates on an international level regarding the introduction of Iran as oppose to Persian is the debate among Iranians at the national level. The word "Persian" has often been used to describe one distinct Iranian group and does not acknowledge the diversity of Iran throughout it's long history. Persian has been used to describe people whose native language belongs to the Persian branch of Indo-Iranian languages (and has been used synonymously with Farsi), as well as the culture of
Persians, which may differ from other Iranian groups. The usage of the term excluded other groups within Iran including the Kurds.

After some Persian scholars protested the name changing announcement, in 1959 Prof. Ehsan Yarshater formed a committee to look into this matter. The committee announced that "changing the name is not justified", so Mohammad Reza Shah announced that both 'Persia' and 'Iran' could be used interchangeably.[5]

In 2006, a large collection of historical maps of Iran was published in the Netherlands entitled "Historical Maps of ersia".[citation needed] Also, in modern times, many of those exiled or alienated by the post-revolution Iranian government now refer to themselves mostly as Persians, this is done to separate themselves from the current government of Iran.