Iran is not Persia - it is Iran, not Persia

[Stefu]

I was just trying to convey the exact image that the word 'Iran' gives, and it came out looking all funky.

[SlowwHand]

quote:
Originally posted by Tassadar5000
...
Dog Pig!!!!!


Now THAT would be butt-ugly.

[St Leo]

All the Persians I know call themselves Persians. Meh.

[PLATO]

Why did Persia change its name after all those years?

[Ramo]

Nationalism.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by St Leo
All the Persians I know call themselves Persians. Meh.

That's because as I showed in the last thread, Persians are an ethnic group, the one that dominates the contry. Iran is the geographic region. Persia = racist name.

[raghar]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
JC #1 (Julius Caesar) "I came, I saw, I conquered"
JC #2 (Jimmy Carter) "I came, I saw, Iran"

Clear enough now?

It was veni * vidi? vici???????

And in Asterix it was veni * vidi * I didn't believe my own eyes.

[Chemical Ollie]

I met a Persian-American in business in the early 90's. She called herself Persian. But as things are today, she would probably call herself an American. After all, she was born in America.

[molly bloom]

Iranians have always referred to themselves as Iranians- its from a root word meaning aryan. Persia is what outsiders called the geographic area of Iran because of the province of Fars = Farsi (the language spoken) = Persia to the Greeks, for instance.

It's rather like calling Great Britain 'England', because English is spoken throughout the separate countries of the British Isles.

http://www.sanibrite.ca/iran/page10.asp

'In much of today's World Wide Web, and literature, the terms Persia and Iran have often been used interchangeably to refer to a vast geographic area that has extended from India to Mediterranean. These two designations refer to quite different geographic, political and cultural entities.

Persia is derived from the word Pars, or Persis, as it was known to the ancient Greeks, and has a narrow and specific connotation. It refers to a mountainous region to the northwest of the Persian Gulf, where the city of Shiraz and province of Pars (Present Iran) and the Achaemenid palace, Persepolis, are situated.

However the etymology of the word Iran is Aryan and refers to the Indo-European people and language, which spread throughout a region, connoting a much larger geographic and cultural domain. The term Iran has been in use since the Achaemenid period (ca 550- 331 B.C.)

Although the use of Persia as the designation for the country is less current, it is still used in its adjectival form, that is Persian to refer to language and culture. Therefore using term "Persia" referring to the Ancient and/or today Iran not historically nor geographically would be correct.

Using term Persia or Persian it corresponds to the small part of Empire of Iran. This word may help to describe a certain kind of product or species such as Persian Rug or Persian Cat, but certainly would be insufficient and unprofessional to name Iran, anything less than "Iran". '

[Sava]

Iran to Iraq then Chad gave me some Turkey!

[itsagreenday]

My father uses the term Iranian more than Persian, because he is ethnically Kurdish. And I've never heard him use Persia as a current geographical place.