Archive for August, 2006

A new friend emailed me this morning, asking me about why I pronounce my name the way I do, and so I figured it was high time that I actually write up something to have for posterity.

The name itself is Persian, but of Greek origin. The original Persian name is Kourosh (koo-ROSH). The one whom Anglophones call Cyrus the Great, is known in Persian history as Kourosh-e Bozorg, but as Greek lacks an “sh” sound, it became Kouros (koo-ROS).

As you probably know, Alexander the Great invaded Persia way back in the 4th century BCE, and took out Darius III, known in Persian as Daryoush — again, no “sh” in Greek.

As such, Persian history has been intermingled with Greek words. To this day, the ancient capital city of Persia, Persepolis (“Persian City”), still retains its Greek suffix. Even modern Persian-speakers still call it Persepolis, except they switch up the accents to Persianize the pronunciation, so it becomes: persé-pol-EES.

Kouros got transferred into Latin as something resembling Cyrus with a hard K sound, but then later became a C, and such so eventually we got to Cyrus, pronounced by most Anglophones as SAI-russ.

Now, since then, the name “Cyrus” has re-entered the Persian language, pronounced in Persian as SI-roos, with a short, almost clipped, first syllable.

Due to the way the Persian language is constructed, nouns precede adjectives, the opposite of English. When accompanied by an adjective, nouns also take the suffix “-e” — pronounced like a Canadian “eh?” . Hence: Kourosh-e Bozorg, or Kourosh (Cyrus) the Great.

Today, last names are considered grammatically as adjectives, and so first names take the “-e” suffix, and the pronunciation changes as such. So if you wanted to say my first name in Persian, you’d call me: SI-roos. If you wanted to address me by my whole name, you’d call me: si-ROOS-e far-ee-VAR, with short “a” sounds in my last name.

Now, you’re saying to yourself, but Cyrus, you don’t pronounce your name either of these ways. That’s very true. I’ve never been called SI-russ, and trying to teach non-Persian speakers the proper clipped pronunciation of SI-roos is often difficult, particularly with the accent on the first syllable. Often, for English speakers, it turns into see-ROOS, which is how much of my Anglophone family addresses me.

Often though, particularly to people meeting me for the first time, this turns into an elongated first syllable, which sounds something like seeee-ROOS, which sounds grating to my ears. So, in order to make it easier, some years ago, I decided on a hybrid pronunciation: suh-ROOS, which retains the -ROOS emphasis, but creates a shorter and easier to pronounce first syllable, “suh”, closer to the Persian pronunciation of SI-roos.

Also, you might have wondered what the deal is with Persia and Farsi. As it turns out, they come from the same root, but have different influences.

The Old Persian name for Persia was Parsa, originating from a province in what is now southwestern Iran called Pars. Today, this province is called Fars, and the language that sprung from it, appropriately, Farsi.

The “p” sound doesn’t exist in Arabic, and given that Arabs invaded Persia in the 7th Century CE, *way* after the Greeks did, the language that was known originally as Parsi, has now become known as Farsi among its native speakers. This is why the Zoroastrians who were chased out of Persia by the Arabs and who later settled in India, and their descendants, are still called Parsis to this day.

While most Anglophones interchange the words Persian and Iranian to describe someone originally from the country now known as Iran, true ethnic Persians trace their origin to the Fars province. Iran is not a mono-ethnic country — there are many ethnic groups which include Kurds, Bakhtiaris, Luris, Qashqais, Jews, Arabs, Baluchis, and others. So, the more accurate descriptor is that today, all Persians are Iranian, but not all Iranians are Persian. Make sense?

However, by the time the Arabs invaded Persia, the Greek, and therefore Latin influence had already spread to Europe, which is how English gets the words Persia and Persian.

But it gets a little confusing because there was such a long history of using the word Persia to describe the nation, from ancient days until 1935. At that time, Reza Shah requested that the international community refer to the country as its inhabitants do, as Iran, rather than Persia.

Today, while we refer to the country as Iran and its people as Iranian, the adjective “Persian” has stuck around to describe things like Persian cats, Persian food, Persian carpets, or the Persian Gulf.

If any Persian historians/linguists care to correct me on any of these points, feel free to do so in the comments.