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Etymology of Iran
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The name of Iran derives immediately from Middle Persian Eran, Pahlavi ʼyrʼn, first attested in the inscription that accompanies the investiture relief of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam. In this inscription, the king's Middle Persian appellation is ardašir šahan šah eran while in the Parthian language inscription that accompanies the Middle Persian one the king is titled ardašir šahan šah aryan (Pahlavi: ...
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The name of Iran derives immediately from Middle Persian Eran, Pahlavi ʼyrʼn, first attested in the inscription that accompanies the investiture relief of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam. In this inscription, the king's Middle Persian appellation is ardašir šahan šah eran while in the Parthian language inscription that accompanies the Middle Persian one the king is titled ardašir šahan šah aryan (Pahlavi: ... ʼryʼn).
The gentilic er- and ary- in eran/aryan derives from Old Iranian *arya- (Old Persian ariya-, Avestan airiia-, etc.), meaning "Aryan," in the sense of "of the Iranians."
In this ancestral form as Old Iranian ariya- and airiia-, eran is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition, and it seems "very likely" that in Ardashir's time "eran still retained this meaning, denoting the people rather than the state.
Notwithstanding this inscriptional use of eran to refer to the Iranian peoples, the use of eran to refer to the empire (and the antonymic aneran to refer to the Roman territories) is also attested by the early Sassanid period. Both eran and aneran appear in 3rd century calendrical text written by Mani. In an inscription of Ardashir's son and immediate successor, Shapur I "apparently includes in Eran regions such as Armenia and the Caucasus which were not inhabited predominantly by Iranians." In Kartir's inscriptions (written thirty years after Shapur's), the high priest includes the same regions (together with Georgia, Albania, Syria and the Pontus) in his list of provinces of the antonymic Aneran. Eran also features in the names of the towns founded by Sassanid dynasts, for instance in Eran-xwarrah-šabuhr "Glory of Eran (of) Shapur". It also appears in the titles of government officers, such as in Eran-amargar "Accountant-General (of) Eran" or Eran-dibirbed "Chief Scribe (of) Eran".
Shapur's trilingual inscription at Ka'ba-i Zartosht also introduces the term eranšahr (), "kingdom of the Iranians", and the provincial capitals of eranšahr have been named and described in a book in Pahlavi entitled Šahrestaniha i eranšahr.
Other than the royal inscriptions texts of this period, the name eranšahr is preserved in post-Sassanid-era Zoroastrian texts. Because the term does does not appear in Old Iranian (where it would have been *aryanam xša?ra- or in Old Persian *- xšaça-, "rule, reign, sovereignty"), the concept is presumed to have been a Sassanid-era development. In the Greek portion of Shapur's trilingual inscription the word šahr "kingdom" appears as ethnous "nation". For speakers of Greek, the idea of an Iranian ethnous was not new: In the 1st century BCE, Strabo had noted a relationship between the various Iranian peoples and their languages: "[From] beyond the Indus [...] Ariana is extended so as to include some part of Persia, Media, and the north of Bactria and Sogdiana; for these nations speak nearly the same language." (Geography, 15.2.1-15.2.8).
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the official name of the country is "Islamic Republic of Iran." For the pre-1935 use of "Persia" as the western name for Iran, see Iran naming convention.
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