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 new designation at the same time distracted attention from the traditional Western designation “Persia” (a term Greek in origin).
Ancient Iran, historically known as Persia, was the dominant nation of western Asia for over twelve centuries, with three successive native dynasties—the Achaemenid, the Parthian, and the Sasanian—controlling an empire of unprecedented size and complexity.
In the Western world, Persia (or one of its cognates) was historically the common name used for Iran. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah officially asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran, the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence.
On the day of the Persian New Year, March 21 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi, requested foreign delegates to use the term Iran, instead of Persia, in a conscious reference to the ancient ancestry of the Iranians.
Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as Persís (Ancient Greek: Περσίς; from Old Persian 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 Pârsa), meaning "land of the Persians", while Persis was one of the provinces of ancient Iran.
When did Persia become Iran? (Short Animated Documentary)
Why did Persia rename Iran?
When Reza Shah became the new king, the name was changed to Iran in an effort to signify a new beginning. Iran made its allegiance clear to the world by changing Persia's name to Iran or Arya, which means Land of the Aryans. Persia or Iran had been greatly impacted by the Soviet Union and Great Britain before 1935.
Iranian neutrality was ignored and the country lost its de facto independence to occupying forces. The British and Soviet authorities dominated the use of major roadways and the Trans- Iranian Railroad for their own purposes, and sequestered and deployed Iranian manpower and equipment for the war e∏ort.
Persia (now Iran) hoped to remain neutral during the First World War, but ended up being occupied by Turkish, Russian and British troops. The latter two nations were allies and had divided Persia into spheres of influence: the British in the south, the Russians in the north.
It was on the Persian New Year of 21 March 1935 that Reza Shah announced that he was formally changing his country's name from 'Persia' to 'Iran'. Persia, he felt, was too colonial, oriental, and demode.
The term Persia was used for centuries and originated from a region of southern Iran formerly known as Persis, alternatively as Pārs or Parsa, modern Fārs. The use of the name was gradually extended by the ancient Greeks and other peoples to apply to the whole Iranian plateau.
Here are the countries World Population Review lists as the oldest in the world by date of earliest known organized government: Iran - 3200 BCE. Egypt - 3100 BCE. Vietnam - 2879 BCE.
During the absolute height of the Mauryan Dynasty (260 B.C.) parts of Eastern Iran were part of India. However this period was brief about 90 years. The influence of culture, language and religion have really been the main driving forces for both nations. Iran and India share a common origin during the Vedic age.
Zoroastrians in Iran have had a long history reaching back thousands of years, and are the oldest religious community of Iran that has survived to the present day. Prior to the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia (Iran), Zoroastrianism had been the primary religion of Iranian peoples.
Iran was a very different country, pre-1979, to what it is now, both economically and socially. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ruled as Shah, having been given strengthened monarchical powers by the US-UK backed 1953 coup, and he introduced wide-spread social changes, particularly after the 1963 White Revolution.
After Germany broke its pact with the Soviets and invaded the USSR in June 1941, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union jointly occupied neutral Iran as a preventive measure, starting on August 25, 1941, and justified their invasion by the need to use Iran as a gateway for delivery of Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet ...
Although Reza Shah declared neutrality at an early stage of World War II, Iran assumed greater strategic importance to the British government, which feared that the Abadan Refinery (of the UK-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) might fall into German hands; refining eight million tons of oil in 1940, the refinery made a ...
Iran was colonized by the Arabs and the Turks, the Mongols, and the Macedonians. Was Iran a British colony? Iran - unlike India etc. - was never a British colony, but the British Empire did have a zone of influence in Iran's southeast, which was established in 1907 along with Czarist...
Although Iran was never a colony, it nonetheless bore the weight of British imperialism. Through capital, corruption, and coercion, the AIOC and the diplomatic service ensured that Iran was subsumed into the “informal empire” and its oil industry operated for Britain's benefit.
After the Revolution of Iran in 1979, Britain suspended all diplomatic relations with Iran. Britain did not have an embassy until it was reopened in 1988.
Although Persian (Farsi) is the predominant and official language of Iran, a number of languages and dialects from three language families—Indo-European, Altaic, and Afro-Asiatic—are spoken. Roughly three-fourths of Iranians speak one of the Indo-European languages.
The terms Iranian and Persian are often used interchangeably to describe people from Iran, and some people think they mean the same thing, but is one term correct? The terms “Persian” and “Iranian” don't necessarily mean the same thing.
The modern Persian name of Iran (ایران) derives from the 3rd-century Sasanian Middle Persian ērān (Pahlavi spelling: 𐭠𐭩𐭫𐭠𐭭, ʼyrʼn), where it initially meant "of the Aryans," and acquired a geographical connotation in the sense of "(lands inhabited by) Aryans." In both geographic and demonymic senses, ērān is ...
