Iran
- 1A country in West Asia, in the Middle East, officially called the Islamic Republic of Iran, with Tehran as its capital.
Iran exports large quantities of oil and natural gas to many countries.
Visitors to Iran often explore the ancient ruins of Persepolis.
Note
The name Persians themselves give their country, which European travelers long called Persia. Sir John Chardin, describing travels he made in the 1670s, already notes that Persians call the land Iran or Iroun. Today Iran is the ordinary name for the state in news and politics, and Persia is the older outsider's name.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Iran is the native name of the country historically called Persia by Europeans. en.wikipedia.org
- Sir John Chardin reports that Persians call their country Iroun and Iran. en.wikipedia.org
- 2The regions historically inhabited by the Iranian peoples, taken together as a single cultural area.
The cultural sphere of Iran once reached from the Caucasus to Central Asia.
For the historian, Iran meant every land where Persian culture took root, far beyond one country's borders.
SimilarPersia
Note
Historians of antiquity mean this wider Iran when they write of Zoroaster of Iran, as A. V. W. Jackson did in 1898, or of its mythical dynasties of kings. Nelson's Perpetual Loose-leaf Encyclopaedia stretches it from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to the Tigris, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Context is the surest signal: ancient Iran, or a story far older than any modern border, points away from the present-day country.
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Origin
Middle Persian ʾērān meant "of the Aryans." It became Classical Persian ērān and then Iranian Persian ایران (irân). Using it as the name of the country is a 3rd-century development, taken from the native name of the Iranian peoples, that is, the many tribes who spoke an Iranian language.