Persian Names - Surnames

Surnames

See also: Category:Persian-language surnames and Category:Iranian-language surnames

Prior to 1919, the people of Persia (Iran) did not use surnames. An act of Vosough od-Dowleh government in 1919 introduced the use of surnames, and the practice expanded during the reign of Reza Shah (r. 1925–1941). Prior to that, a person was often distinguished from others by a combination of prefixes and suffixes attached to his name which, if omitted, might cause that person to be taken for someone else.

In many cases an individual was known by the name of the district, city, town, or even the village from which they came by using the locality's name as a suffix, for example: Nuri, Khorasani, Mazandarani, Kordestani, Tehrani, Esfahani, and Shirazi.

Among many other secularization and modernization reforms, surnames were required by Reza Shah, following similar contemporary patterns in Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and later in Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser.