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.
Gee, I doubt that anyone is gonna be able to correct you…
What did you study @ Berkeley? It wasnt perhaps Persian History and Culture was it? 😉
so when you were born was your name kouroush or seeroos?
wow and to think some people cared that much
Nah, I studied political economy. 🙂
Beautiful and fascinating, thank you. I studied ancient Greek at high school (in Italy) and I remember lots of stories from the old historic literature we had to translate, and Cyrus was always there. Didn’t know his name was actually Ky-roosh, with this “sh” sound 🙂 But I know now, from a friend of mine that studied Persian, that Farsi or Persian has many elements from a indo-european basis. He told me once that “daughter” in Persian sound pretty much like, ehm, “daughter”! Dotar, something like that. You only write using tha arab system, I know 🙂
I knew it!
I’ve been reading your posts at Macuser and have always suspected that you were Persian. I myself am half Persian and half French, since my father is Persian but I was born in France…So I pronounce my first name the French way and my last name the Persian way and it really confuses people.
And antipanti, you’re right, daughter is almost pronounced almost the same way in Persian (it’s like : “Dortal” or “Doghtal”)
What’s weird is that “son” is not (it’s “Pesal” or “Peghsal”)
If you want to know, my last name’s pronouced kind of like “aah-zim-zah-deh”
But this is about Cyrus, so..
Weird—for some reason, Safari doesn’t connect the letters when you write your name in Farsi at the top of your front page, but Firefox (and Camino) does. I don’t know Farsi, but I studied Arabic for a little while, so it confused me. Oh well, guess it’ll make a good MacUser post. 🙂
Yes, the Persian word for daughter is usually spelled “dokhtar”.
And yes, Dan, I find Firefox has better Unicode support than Safari.
Kourosh is modern persian . Ancient persian is Kurush like the ancient Kuru dynasty of India.
It would be great if persians called Cyrus Kurush and darius DÄrayawuÅ¡h and Zoroaster Zarathushtra!! I think it would be even greater if Persians read the Avesta and found its closeness to the Indian Vedas. There is far too much in common both the religions and languages. Persians always say they are proud of their culture but no one knows anything about the Avesta!!!
Kourosh is modern and ancient Persian, yes.
LIVE WITH KOUROSH THE GREAT
Thank you kourosh for your weblog.
I Live in Perisa(Iran) and am so happy and glad that you have make this
blog for represent peopels.
I have someting to say for Hari:
I am persian, I know Avesta The holly book off Zartosht, I am Zoroastrian…
but it will take time untill the people here to understand who they was, what they had and what they have lost.We where not conquered by alexander the pig! thats what they say. But WE had do it to our selfs.. WE had lost our self..WE had BETRAYAL our self
like Besus or Mazeh or Sati Barzan or Razant.
Persia will come back and breath again but more powerful than ever.
Hi,
We are doing an event on Persia. We’ve decided to name the event ‘Cyrus’. As so many conflicts are present globally at this date, we’ve decided to honour and celebrate the great. The ‘great’ being all human rights practiced and respected. We’ve chosen the theme ‘Cyrus’ (Persian night) as Cyrus the great declared the first Charter of Human Rights known to mankind, which is written on a clay cylinder.
The event will feature many entertainments such as dancing, drums and faqir (fire eater). I was wondering if in fact Persian dancing was performed as an entainment or something else. We did some research on it but could not confirmed the tradition.
Someone please help?
Thanks.
I find this information quite interesting. My last name is Cyrus. I didn’t know that my name originated form Greece rather than Persia. Thank you!
Hi,
Thanks for helping me work out how to spell my name in Persian and Iranian. Took me two goes, forgot it was a RTL language and I think I was calling myself Farivar for a week 🙂
Anyway, I just registered ?????.com — yes, that’s what I said too.
You’re more than welcome to: ?????.?????.com infact, I set it up just then with a wildcard to divert to this page. I’m not sure how email is going to work, the internet is still working itself out with regard to non-english naming.
Oh, and anybody else who would like a free subdomain, can also contact me – subdomains@cyruslesser.com
I have
?????.com
?????.com
©YR.US
cyrus.ws (
I would like to comment on the issue that was brought up by Dan and Cyrus about the Persian words not being connected in Safari browser. This is known bug in Safari and OSX text engine. We (IRMUG) have been reporting this to Apple and they have solved this problem in the Leopard which will be available in Oct. 2008.
The solution to this problem is to remove the fonts: Time New Roman, Tahoma, Arial from the User/library/Fonts to your desktop and restart Safari. Removing these fonts won’t affect your work in the word processors as they still exist int the System library.
This problem is caused after installing MS Office packages which installs its own copy of the above mentioned fonts.
Ahmad
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Hi Cyrus….
I am a Parsi.. and your name is a very common in my culture.. just that we have bastardized it even further, and its pronounced as -as SIGH-RASS… ! 🙂 R u a Zoroastrian?
No, I’m not, unfortunately. Are you?
Hi Cyrus,
What does the name Kourosh mean exactly? If it even means something in Greek? Thanks.
I’m just an avid historian esp. Greek, Persian and Roman.
I think it has something to do with the word “sun.”
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Kouros actually means “young man” in greek. The term “kouros” refers mainly to statues of young men throughout antiquity. M
hi- i have a son named cyrus after “cyrus the great” and i was wondering how it is spelled in persian .
If you look on my homepage, (cyrusfarivar.com), you’ll see that I have it written in Persian there. It’s the first Persian word, as written right to left.
I wish my name was Cyrus or Darius. I hate being Iranian and having a name from Arab origins.
hey cool. my last name is Cyrus too.. I’m looking for some persian art to inspire my henna body painting hobby. Know of any good sites?
my last name is cyrus, too. Thank you for educating my on my last name. I always thought Cyrus had deeper meaning.
Could you please contact me regarding what comic books exist in the middle East, or is it relatively a non-existent medium? I know they have “The 99” and a Lebanese heroine, but I’m trying to get a grip on what the total amount are and their diversity, and the countries which have them. thanks.
Scott
ocsdc@hotmail.com
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hi cyrus, i really enjoyed reading this! i am parsi, and i totally agree with havovi. we pronounce it like SAI-RUSS! its a very anglicized pronounciation thanks to the british raj and the gujrati! im sure if you’ve heard of miley cyrus the silly american pop singer, she pronounces her name like SAI-RUSS too. i think its a really nice name! my surname is actually irani, but i use my dads first name as my surname.
My 1 year old son is called Cyrus as it means sun and my daughter is called Isis so both names are linked thank you for the history
I wrote four novels to cover the life of Cyrus the Great. No one has paid much interest in them. I felt he needed to be popularized because he truly was Great! I know another man named after him.
c. j. kirwin: Where can I buy your books about Cyrus the Great?
Ralph Cyrus: Watch “The Story Of Human Rights” and “In search of Cyrus the Great” on youtube. Also search for Cyrus video’s.
Forbes in his book “Power Ambition Glory: The Stunning Parallels between Great Leaders of the Ancient World and Today . . . and the Lessons You Can Learn”; rated 6 great leaders in order of importance: Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar and of course, Xenophon.
Cyrus’ legacy has been felt even as far away as Iceland and colonial America. Many of the forefathers of the United States of America sought inspiration from Cyrus the Great through works such as Cyropaedia. Thomas Jefferson, for example, had two personal copies of the book, “which was a mandatory read for statesmen alongside Machiavelli’s The Prince. (From Wikipedia: references and sources cited)
Harry Truman’s reading focused on biography, which provided for him keys to leadership. …Truman observed that great men’s first victories were won “over themselves and their carnal urges. Self-discipline with all of them came first.” Among those leaders he admired were .., the Persian leader Cyrus the Great, …
(google “Truman Cyrus the Great” in archives.gov website)
By the way Farsi should be spelled as Pharsi. The names in which P was changed to F should be spelled with Ph instead of F. e.g. Palestine/Philistine
Hello Cyrus,
My grandson’s name is also Cyrus. At birth he announced (child to mother link) his name as phonetic (“Sear-us”). My daughter thought this a possible Greek pronunciation of the Persian Cyrus. However Cyrus’ father accused his mother of naming him after a car model or perhaps a cloud formation.
Regards,
Ruth
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Hi Cyrus,
I enjoyed reading this I am greek and just recently had a baby boy and his name is Cyrus yes pronounced sai-russ! A beautiful name any way its pronounced 😉
My name is and always has been, Cyrus.