Persian or Farsi?
Technical Terminology What's in a name?? Persian - The word in English for that language which is today usually pronounced "farsi" in its homeland. (Note: English has a word "German" and French has a word "allemand" both of which refer to a language whose native speakers call "Deutsch" or, if speaking about a certain dialect of it "allemanisch". If you say "Deutsch" when speaking English, people are going to think you're strange!) Fars/Pars (1) - The name of a certain province in Iran. Fars/Pars (2) - The name the ancient Greeks used to refer to the above-mentioned province and all the lands beyond which were inhabited by these same people first encountered in Fars. (Note: The Greeks did the same thing in a place farther east: Sind/Hind/Ind province which was their first stop in the lands beyond the Indus River became the name for a much larger geographical area and remains so today.) Farsi/Parsi (1)- (Adjectival form of Fars/Pars) The language of the above province and lands (don't forget Farsi-ye Tajiki (spoken in Tajikistan) and Farsi-ye Dari (spoken in Afghanistan) and many, many dialects) as pronounced by the inhabitants today. I repeat: This is the way native speakers of this language refer to their language. It's not an English word. (Note: There are dialects of this language where /f/ and /p/ are not distinguishable. And since Arabs lacked /p/ in their language [which is called Arabic and belongs to the very different and unrelated Semitic language family] (Arabs in America still like to bark their cars in barking lots), Arabs have preferred to say "farisi" over "parisi". (I only mention Arabs as they've had an enormous influence (the written script, for example) on the language in which we are trying to do word-processing.) Farsi (2) - The word for "Persian" used by some English speakers who either don't know the word "Persian" exists or who wish to make some cultural/political statement. (Or maybe it just has a nice, exotic ring to it??) Farsi (3) - The name for Persian in Computerese. It is abbreviated FA. Since Microsoft has come to call this language "Farsi", that means you need to double check all English-language documentation/manuals under both "farsi" and "persian" or you may miss what you're searching for. The problem seems to be too-well entrenched to fix at this point. Because it is hard enough to do any sort of Persian computing, I have used the word "Farsi" on this website when giving instructions for setting up your Microsoft software. If you are passionate on this point, I apologize and offer this page you are reading to justify my usage and hope you'll understand I'm just trying to make the largest number of people be able to type Persian with fewest headaches possible. Parsi - (with "p" only!) The term for this language used by fanatics used to show that they are of the seed of Darius and only the purest Achaemenian blood flows through their veins and that they speak only the most noble form of the language unadulterated by foreign marauders. (Although you should approach this group with caution, you may be pleasantly surprised because there are some decent, friendly and helpful ones included in their ranks who are just trying to get by like the rest of us.) Parsee - Member of the Zoroastrian community settled in India, mainly around Bombay. The Parsees are the descendants of the Zoroastrian Sasanians who fled their homeland during the time of the spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula. The Parsees have flourished in India and have produced many an entrepreneur and scholar and some Parsees have become famous like Persis Khambatta (she was the bald one in Star Trek: the Motion Picture back in 1979) and Zubin Mehta, (conductor of the Israel Philharmonic since 1991. Before that the New York Philharmonic (1978-91). He hasn't forgotten his native tongue, Gujarati.) Iranian - The English adjective referring to a person or thing from Iran including its languages. The Indo-Iranian branch is a subset of the Indo-European language family. (English is also an Indo-European language.) The word "Iranian" meaning the language or language group is normally restricted to scholarly, linguistic contexts. Iran - A word related to the English word "Aryan" [which used to imply a certain linguistic affiliation but came to be used in racial contexts.] This is the word in Persian for the name of the geographic homeland of the Iranian people (of which "Fars" is just a part.) This is also the modern English word for the country which used to be called Persia and is now officially "the Islamic Republic of Iran." The Persians/Iranians have always referred to their country as "Iran" and didn't mind others calling it "Persia" but around World War II, it became convenient to stress the "Aryan" connection, thus the world was asked to switch to the term "Iran". (Even in those pre-MTV-generation days, somehow, no one noticed the Iran-Aryan connection but instead saw plenty of similarity between Iran-Iraq. Thus we have lots of people out there who have no idea Persia and Iran are the same thing but who think Iran and Iraq are just spelling variants of the same thing!) Iraq - A modern country with a name in English that sounds a lot like neighboring modern-day Iran but is QUITE unrelated. Persia - The pre-1935 English (and Western) name for the country now called Iran. It is the anglicized form of "fars/pars" of the Greeks. Because some people think "Persia" is synonymous with fine carpets, poetry and a great empire while "Iran" is synonymous with oil and ayatollas, they prefer to use this word instead of "Iran". (Some other people don't like the word "Persian" due to its sounding like an "orientalist" term.)
