Iran Naming Convention - The Two Names in The West

The Two Names in The West

The name Persia was the official name of Iran in the Western world before 1935, but the Iranian people inside their country since the time of Zoroaster (probably circa 1000 BC), or even before, have called their country "Aryānām" (the equivalent of "Iran" in the proto-Iranian language) or its equivalents. It is not exactly clear what the Iranian people called their country during the Median (728 BC-559 BC), Achaemenid (550 BC–330 BC) or Parthian (250 BC– 226 CE) empires, but evidently from the time of the Sassanids (226–651 CE) they have called it Iran, meaning "the land of Aryans". In Middle Persian sources, the name "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) and 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.

On 21 March 1935, the ruler of the country, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking foreign delegates to use the term "Iran" in formal correspondence.

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

In the summer of 1959, following concerns that the "new" name had, as one politician 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 Shah approved this. However, the implementation of the proposal was weak, simply allowing "Persia" and "Iran" to be used interchangeably. Nowadays 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 term "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.