Strange Opinions about "Persia" & "Persian"

Shahryar Peyrovani, Geneva, February 5, 2005

I read Ms. Azam Nemati's article "I'll Show You Persian!" and Mr. Pejman Akbarzadeh's reply "Misconceptions about PERSIAN".

I live in Switzerland. The main languages are French and German. In German-speaking provinces all people know our language as "Persisch" and in French-speaking provinces all people know it as "Persane". "Farsi" (Arabic version of "Parsi") is unknown.

Also when people want to speak or write about history, culture and art of our country mostly use "La Perse" (French for "Persia") or "Das Persien" (German equivalent of Persia). Needless to say that most of the people confuse IRAN with IRAQ because these names are very similar in European languages. Most of them think Iranian people speak Arabic.

Some years ago government of Switzerland printed beautiful postal stamps and wrote on them HELVETIA. (Latin name of Switzerland which was used more than 2000 years ago). All NATIONS IN THE WORLD ARE TRYING TO INTRODUCE THEIR OLD HISTORY AND CULTURE EXCEPT FOR US !.... I do not know what is the reason ?!

As you know even Arabs like Moroccan or Egyptians in Western languages never refer to their country as MAGHREB or MESR . All of them unitedly use Egypt and Morocco .... because MAGHREB and MESR are meaningless names for Western litrature . The word Egypt is coming from "Ekept" (now a small community, Arabs call them ghebty) but all Egyptian use Egypt proudely regardless of being Arab or Eghebty but some Persians (Iranians) think useing the words Persia/Persians means chauvinist or ignoring other comunity like Azeris or Lures!!! In fact, in Western culture from the ancient time till last century they had refered to our country and language only as PERSIA and PERSIAN. We are doing disservice to our history and culture by using Farsi in English.

FARSI is new word in the West and so meaningless for non Moslem . It is regretable that unfurtunatly even Persian diaspora like that lady who claims to be historian becom angry and says : "I was so sad that someone has so much time to go through the wasteful process of quoting all kinds of sources to say so I would use "Persian" instead of Farsi.."!

Some years ago Prof. Kamran Talattof wrote an informative article on this matter. I ask all iranian.com readers to read that again:

http://www.iranian.com/Features/Dec97/Persian/

The usage of "Farsi" in English language is very similar that in Persian we say "Baladi GERMAN sohbat koni??!!" ....

Regards

Shahryar Peyrovani, Geneva
February 5, 2005