Last Updated on 3 weeks ago by TodayWhy Editorial
Open a history book and you will find the Persian Empire. Open a news broadcast and you will hear Iran. Visit a museum and you may find yourself standing before artifacts labeled “Persia” that were made in a country the world now calls something else entirely.
Two names. One country. Thousands of years of history.
The question “Why is Iran called Persia?” turns out to be one of the most revealing questions you can ask about this ancient civilization — because the answer uncovers how empires are named, how outsiders perceive nations differently from how those nations see themselves, and how a single royal decree in 1935 formalized a truth that Iranians had known for millennia: that their country was never really called Persia at all.
TodayWhy tells that full story — from the tribe called Parsa in the 6th century BCE, through the conquest of Alexander the Great, the rise of the Sasanian Empire, centuries of European map-making, and the deliberate political act that made the world finally use the name Iranians had always used for themselves.
1. The Short Answer: Exonym vs. Endonym
Before diving into millennia of history, here is the essential linguistic distinction that explains everything:
- Endonym: A name a people use for themselves and their land (from within).
- Exonym: A name that outsiders give to a people or place (from without).
Iran is the endonym. Persia is — and always was — the exonym.
As travel specialists at Far Horizons summarize with elegant clarity: “Iran is the endonym for Persia; Persia is the exonym for Iran.” The Iranian people called their homeland Iran (or its ancient equivalents) for thousands of years. The name “Persia” was invented by the ancient Greeks, spread through Western scholarship, embedded in European maps, and used internationally for over two millennia — even as the people being described continued to call themselves Iranians all along.
The 1935 name change did not rename the country. It simply corrected the rest of the world.
Source: Far Horizons – When Was Persia Renamed Iran and Why? | Britannica – Persia
2. Where the Name “Persia” Comes From
The word “Persia” traces back to a single tribe, in a single region, at a specific moment in the ancient world — and then ballooned into a label for one of history’s greatest empires.
The Tribe of Parsa
Around 1000 BCE, an Indo-European nomadic people migrated into the southwestern plateau of what is now Iran. They settled in a region that became known, after them, as Parsa — or in Greek, Persis. Their territory corresponds roughly to the modern Iranian province of Fars (still named after them today).
As Britannica records: “Parsa was the name of an Indo-European nomadic people who migrated into the region about 1000 BCE. The first mention of Parsa occurs in the annals of Shalmaneser II, an Assyrian king, in 844 BCE.”
This tribe — the Parsa, or Persians — was one among many peoples inhabiting the Iranian plateau. They were not yet dominant. They were not yet the rulers of an empire. They were a relatively small tribal group living in the southwest.
From Tribe to Empire: Cyrus the Great
Everything changed in 550 BCE, when a Parsa king named Cyrus II — later known as Cyrus the Great — led a revolt against the dominant Median kingdom, defeated the Median king Astyages, and rapidly built the largest empire the world had ever seen. His Achaemenid Empire eventually stretched from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east.
Because Cyrus came from the land of Parsa, and because the Greeks were among the first foreign civilizations to encounter and document this empire, they named the entire civilization after its founding region. In Greek, the land became Persis, Persike, or Perses — anglicized over time to “Persia.”
The Greek Mythological Overlay
The Greeks did not merely borrow the name phonetically — they also wove it into their own mythology. Greek legend attributed the origins of the Persian people to Perseus, the legendary hero, giving him a fictional son named Perses from whom the Persians supposedly descended. This mythological framing reinforced the Greek name in the Western literary tradition, giving it a resonance that a purely phonetic transliteration might not have had.
Source: Britannica – Ancient Iran | Britannica – Persis | History Hit – When Did Persia Become Iran and Why?
3. The Achaemenid Empire: How “Persia” Took Over the Western World
The Achaemenid Empire (559–330 BCE) was the crucible in which the name “Persia” became inseparable from the entire Iranian civilization in the Western imagination.
The Scale of the Empire
Under Cyrus and his successors — Cambyses II, Darius I, and Xerxes I — the Achaemenid Empire became the largest political entity in the ancient world. At its peak, it governed an estimated 44% of the world’s population. It incorporated peoples from dozens of ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds: Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks of Asia Minor, Lydians, Medes, Parthians, Scythians, and many more.
Crucially, none of these other peoples were Parsa. The ruling dynasty came from Parsa, but the vast majority of subjects, soldiers, and administrators did not. The name “Persia” was a label for the ruling ethnic group, applied by outsiders to the entire empire.
Persepolis: A Name That Speaks
Darius I founded a magnificent ceremonial capital that the Greeks called Persepolis — literally, “Persian City” (from Persis + polis). Today its ruins in Fars Province remain among the most spectacular ancient sites in the world. The very name encodes the Greek imposition of “Persia” on a capital the Iranians themselves called Parsa.
The Persian Wars and Western Memory
When the Achaemenid Empire clashed with the Greek city-states in the Persian Wars — at Marathon (490 BCE), Thermopylae (480 BCE), and Salamis (480 BCE) — these conflicts were seared into Western historical consciousness as defining confrontations between East and West. The name “Persia” became synonymous with the vast, powerful empire against which free Greek civilization had heroically struggled.
This cultural memory proved extraordinarily durable. For two thousand years after the Achaemenid Empire had ceased to exist, Western scholars, writers, mapmakers, and poets continued to call the land of the Iranian plateau “Persia” — because that was the name etched into their collective historical imagination by the drama of the Persian Wars.
Source: World History Encyclopedia – Ancient Persia | Britannica – Ancient Iran
4. What Iranians Always Called Their Land: The Origin of “Iran”
While the outside world was busy using “Persia,” what did the people themselves call their homeland?
The Ancient Root: Arya
The word “Iran” derives ultimately from the ancient Indo-Iranian word arya- — a term used by the early Indo-Iranian peoples to describe themselves as a community sharing language, culture, and identity. It did not carry racial or biological connotations in the ancient context; it denoted a cultural and linguistic kinship.
As the Princeton History Department’s scholarly analysis explains: “The word ‘Iran’ is derived from the Middle Persian word Ērān, which is in turn a derivative of the Indo-Iranian word *arya-, which was an endonym that Indo-Iranians referred to themselves as.”
The Avesta — one of the oldest religious texts in the world, the sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism — uses the term Airyanem Vaejah (the expanse of the Aryans) to describe the Iranian homeland. Zoroaster himself is traditionally dated to around 1000 BCE, placing this usage of the Iran-root name in the deepest antiquity.
From Arya to Eran to Iran
The linguistic evolution followed a clear path:
- Proto-Iranian: arya (the Aryan peoples)
- Avestan (Old Iranian): Airyanam (of the Aryans / Iranian lands)
- Old Persian: Referenced on the Behistun Inscription, where Darius I describes himself as “an Aryan, having Aryan lineage”
- Parthian Pahlavi: Aryān (the Aryans)
- Middle Persian (Sasanian Pahlavi): Ērān (the Iranians / Iran)
- Modern Persian: Īrān (Iran)
Throughout this evolution, the core self-designation remained constant: the Iranian people called themselves and their land by variants of the same ancient root. The name was never lost; it was simply not the name the outside world chose to use.
5. The Sasanian Empire and the First Official Use of “Iran”
The Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) represents the pivotal moment in which the name “Iran” was first used in an official, royal, inscribed context — not merely as a cultural endonym, but as a formal designation for the state.
Ardashir I and the Inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam
When Ardashir I founded the Sasanian dynasty in 224 CE, he commissioned a great investiture relief at Naqsh-e Rostam — the royal necropolis in Fars Province. The inscription accompanying this relief, written in Middle Persian (Pahlavi), titles the king:
“Ardashir, King of Kings of Aryans (Iran)”
This is the earliest known royal use of “Iran” (in its Middle Persian form Ērān) as an official state designation. It is not an informal cultural term; it is carved in stone, on one of the most prestigious royal monuments in Iranian history.
Shapur I Confirms the Name
A generation later, Shapur I reinforced this usage in his own trilingual inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, written in Middle Persian, Parthian, and Middle Greek. In it, Shapur refers to his realm as “Iran” and “Iranshahr” (Kingdom of Iran). The Parthian text uses Aryan, and the Greek text uses Arian-xshathra — all referring to the same entity.
In other words, the Sasanian royal house was formally using “Iran” as the name of their realm fourteen centuries before Reza Shah’s 1935 declaration. This is the crucial historical fact that exposes the 1935 name change not as an invention, but as a restoration.
Source: SurfIran – Why Persia Became Iran | Wikipedia – Name of Iran | Timeless Myths – Why Did Persia Become Iran
6. Why the West Kept Using “Persia” for 2,500 Years
Given that Iranians themselves had been using “Iran” for millennia, why did the Western world continue to say “Persia” right up until 1935?
The Power of Classical Inheritance
Greek historiography — particularly the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon — established “Persia” as the canonical name for the Iranian world in the Western literary tradition. When Rome inherited Greek intellectual culture, it inherited the name too. When medieval European scholars rediscovered ancient texts, they found “Persia” everywhere. When the Renaissance produced the great European encyclopedists and cartographers, they mapped the region as “Persia.”
Each generation inherited the name from the previous one, and the inertia of established nomenclature is extraordinarily powerful.
The Orientalist Lens
European mapmakers and scholars of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries consistently used “Persia” in their atlases, gazetteers, and encyclopedias. As one historical analysis notes, this entrenched usage was reinforced by Orientalist scholarship and artistic depictions that presented Iran through a lens of romanticized exoticism — ancient empires, carpet-weaving, court poetry, and legendary kings. “Persia” was not merely a geographic label; it was a cultural brand, evoking a specific aesthetic of Eastern antiquity.
This was a perception shaped entirely from the outside. It described what the West imagined Iran to be, rather than what Iran’s own people understood themselves to be.
The Colonial Dimension
Iran’s travails in the 19th century deepened the problem. Under the weak Qajar dynasty, Iran was squeezed between British and Russian imperial interests, forced to sign humiliating treaties (the Gulestan and Turkmenchay treaties with Russia, the Treaty of Paris with Britain), and economically dominated by foreign concessions. The word “Persia” in European correspondence became associated with a diminished, subordinate state — a relic of ancient glory reduced to a pawn of great-power rivalry.
As Iran’s own government would later put it, the continued use of “Persia” evoked associations of “weakness, ignorance, misery, lack of independence, disorderly condition and incapacity.” These were not the associations Iran’s new leadership wished to project.
Source: In The War Room – Why Persia Became Iran | Iran So Far Away – From Persia to Iran
7. Iran Under Arab, Mongol, and Turkic Rule: A Name That Survived
One of the most remarkable aspects of the name “Iran” is its extraordinary resilience across conquest and foreign domination.
The Arab Conquest (7th–8th Century CE)
When Arab Muslim armies conquered the Sasanian Empire in the 7th century CE, Iran’s political independence was extinguished. Arabic became the language of administration, religion, and scholarship. The Arab world had its own name for the Iranian peoples: Ajam — meaning “mute” or “non-Arabic speaker,” a term that carried patronizing connotations.
Yet the Iranian people did not abandon their identity or their name. The great Persian literary and cultural renaissance of the 9th–11th centuries — producing poets like Ferdowsi, Rumi, and Hafez — was conducted in the New Persian language, and its works consistently reference Iran as the homeland of its civilization.
Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings, ~1010 CE), the Persian national epic, is saturated with references to Iran as the eternal homeland — its kings, its heroes, and its struggles to preserve its identity against foreign domination. The name “Iran” survived the Arab conquest not in official state documents, but in the living culture of a people who refused to forget who they were.
The Mongol and Turkic Periods
Subsequent conquests by the Seljuk Turks, the Mongols of Genghis Khan and Hulagu Khan, and later the Timurids all failed to erase the Iranian cultural identity. Persian remained the language of high culture across a vast belt from Anatolia to India. The Mughal court in India used Persian as its administrative and literary language. The Ottoman court produced Persian poetry. The name “Iran” was embedded in this literary culture even as the political structures above it changed repeatedly.
Source: Timeless Myths – Why Did Persia Become Iran | To Iran Tour – Persia to Iran
8. The Qajar Dynasty: Persia at Its Weakest {#qajar}
By the 19th century, the Iranian state was in profound crisis under the Qajar dynasty (1789–1925).
Iran was forced to cede enormous territories to Russia (the Caucasus in 1813 and 1828), lost its influence in Afghanistan to British expansion, and was carved into spheres of influence by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which divided the country into British and Russian zones without consulting any Iranian. The discovery of oil in 1908 brought the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) into the picture — extracting Iranian resources while paying the Iranian state a small royalty.
The Qajar shahs were famously weak, corrupt, and dependent on foreign loans that saddled the country with debt and obliged it to grant further concessions. In European capitals, “Persia” was increasingly a byword for oriental decline — a great civilization humbled by its own failures and foreign exploitation.
This was the country — broken, divided, in debt, its resources extracted by foreign companies — that Reza Shah Pahlavi overthrew in 1925. And it was this tarnished image, encapsulated in the word “Persia,” that he was determined to erase.
Source: Iran So Far Away – From Persia to Iran | Timeless Myths – Why Did Persia Become Iran
9. Reza Shah Pahlavi: The Man Who Changed the Name
Reza Khan was an army officer of modest origins who rose through the military to seize power in a 1921 coup, and by 1925 had deposed the last Qajar shah and declared himself the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty.
A Program of Radical Modernization
Reza Shah modeled his rule on other modernizing strongmen of the era — particularly Kemal Atatürk of Turkey, who was simultaneously dismantling the Ottoman legacy and building a secular, nationalist Turkish state. Like Atatürk, Reza Shah:
- Centralized power, crushing tribal and regional autonomy.
- Built infrastructure: the Trans-Iranian Railway, roads, and modern ports.
- Reformed education: founding Tehran University (1934) and establishing secular schools.
- Modernized the military.
- Promoted a pre-Islamic national identity, emphasizing the Achaemenid and Sasanian heritage over the Islamic and Arab-influenced Qajar legacy.
The name change was inseparable from this broader project. “Iran” was the name of Cyrus the Great’s civilization, of Ardashir I’s inscriptions, of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh — a name that carried ancient dignity, indigenous authenticity, and national pride. “Persia” carried the smell of the Qajar humiliations.
The Role of the German Ambassador
An important nuance in the history: the specific idea of formalizing the name change internationally is reported to have originated not from Reza Shah himself, but from Iran’s ambassador to Germany, who suggested that adopting the native name in international use would signal a new beginning for the nation. The Shah embraced the idea and directed the foreign ministry to implement it.
Source: Timeless Myths – Why Did Persia Became Iran | Wikipedia – Iranian nationalism | Holocaust Encyclopedia – Iran During World War II
10. The 1935 Name Change: What Happened and Why
The formal act that changed the name of the country in international usage was swift, deliberate, and carefully framed.
The December 1934 Circular
On December 25, 1934, the Persian Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed a circular memorandum to all foreign diplomatic missions in Tehran. The document formally requested that:
- The terms “Iran” and “Iranian” replace “Persia” and “Persian” in all official correspondence and conversation.
- The change would take effect from March 21, 1935 — coinciding with Nowruz, the Iranian New Year.
Nowruz, March 21, 1935
At a Nowruz gathering on March 21, 1935, Reza Shah personally reiterated the request to foreign delegates, asking them to begin using “Iran” in all official communications immediately. The timing was deliberate: Nowruz is the most important celebration in the Iranian calendar, marking the spring equinox and the renewal of the year. Using it as the launch date for the name change gave the act cultural resonance and symbolic weight.
The Stated Rationale
The Iranian government’s stated justification was explicit. Official correspondence framed the continued use of “Persia” as an “etymological and historical inexactitude” — a foreign-imposed error. The government asserted that “Persia” evoked associations of:
“Weakness, ignorance, misery, lack of independence, disorderly condition and incapacity”
— a damning portrait of the Qajar era that Reza Shah’s modernizing regime was determined to leave behind.
“Iran,” by contrast, was the name of Cyrus the Great’s empire, of the Sasanian inscriptions at Naqsh-e Rostam, of the Zoroastrian sacred texts — a name with 3,000 years of indigenous use and none of the colonial baggage that “Persia” had accumulated.
The Raisina Hills put it precisely: “The name change was not merely cosmetic. Scholars and historians regard it as a declaration of sovereignty.”
Source: The Raisina Hills – Iran or Persia? | SurfIran – Why Persia Became Iran | Iran So Far Away – From Persia to Iran
11. Was Nazi Germany Involved? The Aryan Question
One of the most persistent questions about the 1935 name change is whether it was influenced by Nazi Germany’s ideology — specifically the Nazis’ obsession with the concept of the “Aryan race.”
This question has a nuanced, multi-part answer.
The Genuine Historical Connection to Germany
Reza Shah maintained significant political and economic relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. German companies were involved in Iranian industrial development. Iran declared neutrality in World War II, but its German-trained officer corps and German economic presence made the British and Soviets deeply suspicious — ultimately leading to the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 and Reza Shah’s forced abdication.
The name “Iran,” meaning “Land of the Aryans,” did resonate with the German National Socialist emphasis on “Aryan” identity — and Iranian nationalist circles were aware of this resonance. Some historians argue that the alignment with German Aryan ideology was at least a contributing factor to the timing and framing of the name change.
The More Important Truth: Iran Was Already “Iran”
However, the scholarly consensus is that the name change was fundamentally an internal nationalist and historical reclamation, not a derivation from Nazi ideology.
As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s analysis states clearly: “In 1935, the Persian government changed the name of the country from ‘Persia’ to ‘Iran,’ the historical name of the country and a designation in common internal use for centuries.”
The word “Aryan” had been used by the Iranian people to describe themselves for at least 3,000 years before the Nazi Party existed. Darius I described himself as “an Aryan” on the Behistun Inscription in the 5th century BCE. The Sasanian kings used the term in their royal titulature in the 3rd century CE. Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh referenced Iran’s Aryan heritage in the 11th century CE.
The Nazis misappropriated a legitimate, ancient concept from Indo-Iranian civilization for their own racial ideology. The fact that Nazi ideology also used the word “Aryan” does not mean that Iran’s use of it was borrowed from the Nazis — any more than India’s use of the swastika (a Hindu sacred symbol thousands of years old) is “borrowed” from Nazi Germany.
As Quora’s expert consensus summarizes: “The 1935 change in international usage was an Iranian government initiative reflecting native terminology and nation-building, not primarily a result of Nazi or fascist influence.”
What Was Genuinely Influenced by the German Connection
What the German relationship did influence was the style of Reza Shah’s nationalism — centralized, authoritarian, cult-of-personality, anti-communist, and focused on glorifying a mythologized national past. In these structural respects, Pahlavi nationalism did share characteristics with European fascist movements. But the name “Iran” itself predates all of this by millennia.
Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia – Iran During World War II | Quora – Nazi Germany and Iran’s Name Change | In The War Room – The Influence of Nazi Germany on Iran’s Name Change
12. How the World Reacted — and How Some Resisted
Most countries complied with the 1935 request promptly and without controversy. Diplomatic usage shifted. International organizations updated their records. Newspapers began transitioning to “Iran.”
However, the transition was not instantaneous worldwide:
- Britain was among the slower adopters, partly because of entrenched institutional usage — the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) did not rename itself the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) until 1935, and even that transition was gradual.
- Academic and literary circles were slower to shift, since historical texts continued to reference “Persia” for the pre-1935 era (which remains entirely appropriate and correct).
- Popular Western culture continued to use “Persia” informally for decades — “Persian cats,” “Persian rugs,” “Persian cuisine” remained common usages that persist to this day.
The 1979 Revolution and a Footnote
It is worth noting that the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which transformed Iran from a secular monarchy into an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini, did not change the country’s name. The revolutionary government retained “Iran” — it was not a Pahlavi innovation they needed to reject. The endonym was older than the Pahlavis by three thousand years.
Source: Today Why – Why Iran Called Persia | SurfIran – Why Persia Became Iran
13. Does “Persia” Still Exist Today? {#persia-today}
“Persia” as a political designation no longer exists — but it lives on in multiple cultural and commercial contexts:
Linguistic and Cultural Survival
- Persian language: The official language of Iran is still called Farsi (from Pars), and in English it is universally called Persian — not “Irani.” Persian literature, Persian poetry, and Persian art continue to use the older nomenclature.
- Persian cats: The breed retains its traditional name.
- Persian rugs / carpets: The global trade in Iranian-made carpets continues under the “Persian rug” designation, which carries enormous brand equity.
- Persian cuisine: Widely used in restaurants and food writing worldwide.
- Persepolis: The ancient ceremonial capital’s Greek-derived name has never been officially replaced — it remains “Persepolis” in all languages, including Persian (though Iranians also call it Takht-e Jamshid).
- The Persian Gulf: The body of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula is officially called the Persian Gulf — a designation Iran defends vigorously against Arab attempts to rename it the “Arabian Gulf.”
Academic and Historical Usage
Historians and archaeologists continue to use “Persia” and “Persian” to describe the pre-1935 civilizations — the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Sassanid Persia, etc. This is entirely appropriate: “Persia” is the correct historical term for the ancient civilization as known in Western scholarship. Using “Iran” to describe the Achaemenid Empire would be an anachronism.
Source: Britannica – Persia | Far Horizons – When Was Persia Renamed Iran?
14. Iran vs. Persia: A Summary of Key Differences
| Feature | Persia | Iran |
|---|---|---|
| Type of name | Exonym (given by outsiders) | Endonym (used by locals) |
| Origin | Greek Persis, from Old Persian Pārsa (a southwestern tribe/region) | Middle Persian Ērān, from proto-Iranian arya- |
| First recorded use | 844 BCE (Assyrian annals, referring to the Parsa tribe) | 224 CE in royal inscriptions (Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rostam); culturally much older |
| Who used it | Greeks, Romans, Arabs (as Fārs), Europeans | The Iranian people themselves, since at least 1000 BCE |
| Primary association | The Achaemenid Empire and its successors; Western classical tradition | The Iranian people’s own cultural and linguistic identity |
| Official status | Never the official Iranian name; international usage until 1935 | Official name since 1935; historically used for millennia |
| Meaning | Named after Pārsa, the southwest region and tribe | “Land of the Aryans” — collective Indo-Iranian identity |
| Still used today? | Yes, for historical, cultural, and some commercial contexts | Yes — the official international name of the country |
15. Conclusion: Two Names, One Civilization
The story of why Iran is called Persia is ultimately a story about who gets to name things.
For 2,500 years, the outside world looked at one of history’s greatest civilizations and called it by the name of one region within it — because that is the region whose kings first impressed themselves on Greek consciousness. “Persia” was never wrong, exactly; it was just incomplete. It described the empire from the outside, through the lens of those who had encountered it, been awed by it, and sometimes fought it. It captured the grandeur of Persepolis, the tragedy of the Persian Wars, the romance of Scheherazade’s world.
But it was never what the people themselves said when they asked where they were from.
They said Iran.
They had been saying Iran — or Eran, or Aryan, or Airyanam — since the time of Zoroaster, since Ardashir I carved it in stone at Naqsh-e Rostam, since Ferdowsi wove it into every verse of the Shahnameh. The name carried three thousand years of civilization, language, and identity.
In 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi did something that was in one sense very simple: he asked the world to use the name that his people had always used. The world complied. “Iran” became official.
And yet “Persia” did not disappear. It lives on in the Persian language, Persian carpets, the Persian Gulf, Persian poetry — in all the ways that one of humanity’s great civilizations has shaped the world, under whichever name the world happened to be using at the time.
Two names. One civilization. Thousands of years of history. Both names, in their own way, honor the same extraordinary place.
16. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: Why is Iran called Persia?
A: Iran is called Persia by the Western world because ancient Greek historians named the entire Iranian civilization after Persis — the southwestern region of Iran where the Achaemenid Empire originated under Cyrus the Great. The Greeks spread this name, Europeans inherited it, and it remained in international use for 2,500 years — even though Iranians themselves always called their country “Iran.” (Source: Britannica)
Q: When did Persia officially become Iran?
A: On March 21, 1935 — Nowruz (Persian New Year) — Reza Shah Pahlavi formally requested that all foreign governments use “Iran” instead of “Persia” in official correspondence. A circular memorandum had been sent to diplomatic missions in December 1934 announcing the change. (Source: SurfIran)
Q: What does “Iran” mean?
A: “Iran” derives from the Middle Persian word Ērān, itself from the ancient proto-Iranian word arya-, meaning “of the Aryans” or “Land of the Aryans.” It denoted a cultural and linguistic identity — not a racial one — and has been used by the Iranian people in various forms for at least 3,000 years. (Source: Wikipedia – Iran (word))
Q: Is “Persia” still a correct name for Iran?
A: In historical and cultural contexts, yes — “Persia” correctly refers to the ancient civilization and empires of the Iranian plateau prior to 1935. For the modern country, “Iran” is the official and correct name. “Persian” remains correct for the language (Farsi), the ethnic identity, and cultural products like carpets and cats. (Source: Britannica – Persia)
Q: Did Iranians ever call their country “Persia”?
A: No. “Persia” is an exonym — a name given by outsiders. Iranians have always used “Iran” (or earlier versions like Eran, Aryān, or Airyanam) to refer to their homeland. The name Iran appears in royal Sasanian inscriptions from the 3rd century CE and in Zoroastrian texts from approximately 1000 BCE. (Source: Far Horizons)
Q: Was the name change from Persia to Iran influenced by the Nazis?
A: Partially, in atmosphere — Reza Shah did have economic and political ties with Nazi Germany, and the “Aryan” connection resonated in that geopolitical context. But the name “Iran” predates the Nazi Party by approximately 3,000 years. Scholarly consensus holds that the name change was primarily a nationalist reclamation of Iran’s indigenous identity, not a product of Nazi ideology. (Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia – Iran During WWII)
Q: Why do we still say “Persian” for the language and not “Iranian”?
A: English inherited “Persian” as the name for the Farsi language from centuries of Western usage, and that linguistic convention has proven more durable than political naming. The language is called Farsi in Persian (from Pārs/Persia), and “Persian” in English — both are correct. The 1935 name change applied to the country’s political designation, not retroactively to language naming conventions. (Source: Today Why)
Q: What is the oldest recorded use of the name “Iran”?
A: Culturally, Iranian peoples used variants of the arya- root from at least 1000 BCE (in Zoroastrian texts). The oldest known royal/state inscription using the name is from 224 CE, when Ardashir I, founder of the Sasanian Empire, titled himself “King of Kings of Aryans (Iran)” at Naqsh-e Rostam. Darius I (5th century BCE) also described himself as “an Aryan” on the Behistun Inscription. (Source: Princeton History)
Last updated: May 2026