Iran?

Persia was a name given to them by the Greeks. The Iranians always referred to themselves as Iran, even under the Achaemenids. The Shah during the 30's I think officially changed the name of the country in all languages to Iran.

An interesting question. But quickly googlable: Name of Iran.
TLDR: Turns out, "Persia" is merely the Western name, while Persians referred to themselves with derivative forms of "Iranians" for centuries and, possibly, several thousand years.

from sassanid era iranians called it iran till now but westerns called it persia
it is said in iran when reza shah came to power he changed the name from persia to iran ( meaning land of aryans ) to make hitler feel good about iran

unmerged(484524) said:

I have this curiosity for a long time.

Why is good old Persia,named Iran(wich means in persian Land of the Aryans)

I mean PERSIA,this name has a milenary history,why don t they call themselfes PERSIA anymore?

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"Persia" is the English name (via Greek and Latin) of the southwestern Iranian province of Fars, which was called Parsa and Pars in pre-Islamic times. In this sense, calling Iran "Persia" is akin to calling the whole of the country after the name of just one of its parts or provinces, a similar case is to call the Netherlands "Holland", or the United Kingdom "England".

The term Aryanam Vaejah appears in the Avesta and translates as "the Land of the Aryans", and is used in this religious text to name the mythical homeland of the Aryan tribes. Darius I in his Behistun inscription calls himself "an Aryan, of Aryan stock", but the Achaemenids did not use the term "Iran" to refer to their empire.

The term appears for the first timem out of its religious original meaning in the rock inscriptions of the second Sasanian shahanshah Shapur I, who called himself as "king of kings of Iran and non-Iran" (in Parthian, Ayran, and in Middle Persian, Eran). From then on, the official name of the Sasanian empire was Eranshahr, which translates literally as "the kingdom of the Aryans", and even after the Islamic conquest the indigenous inhabitants of the land kept calling themselves "Iranians".

When Reza Shah Pahlavi I changed officially the name of the country in the 1930 from "Persia" to "Iran" he was merely making official the name that Iranians had always used for their own land.

Country names can be interesting, across languages. Germany is either named after the Alamanni (French), Germania (English), variations of old German for "people" (German) and what not else.

Kinda interesting that the Iran managed a name change. I doubt the French would listen if anyone complained about their word for Germany. Although I guess it's not quite the same issue. But then not so different either. ^^

Closed because of necromancy