In 1935, under Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Iranian Govt formally asked the world to cease using Persia !!

Centuries of foreign chronicles, travelogues and diplomatic correspondence entrenched Persia in international parlance. 

The name (Iran) matters, because it carries the weight of experiences that span empires, revolutions and nation‑building.

The exonym Persia was the official name of Iran in the Western world before March 1935, but the Iranian peoples inside their country since the time of Zoroaster (probably circa 1000 BC), or even before, have called their country Arya, Iran, Iranshahr, Iranzamin (Land of Iran), Aryānām (the equivalent of Iran in the proto-Iranian language) or its equivalents. 

The term Arya has been used by the Iranian people, as well as by the rulers and emperors of Iran, from the time of the Avesta. 

In 1935, under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Iranian government formally asked the world to cease using Persia in diplomatic dealings and instead employ Iran, the name its people had long used for themselves. The request went to all foreign embassies and heralded a recalibration of external identity to match internal self‑designation.

On the 25th December [1934] the Persian Ministry for Foreign Affairs addressed a circular memorandum to the Foreign Diplomatic Missions in Tehran requesting that the terms "Iran" and "Iranian" might be used in official correspondence and conversation as from the next 21st March, instead of the words "Persia" and "Persian" hitherto in current use. 

Changing the name was not merely cosmetic. 

As experts feel; it was a declaration of sovereignty. 

Iran resonated with a deeper provenance -- a lineage not confined to a single province, but a broader cultural and linguistic civilisation stretching over millennia. 

'Iran' anchored the modern nation in an indigenous matrix of continuity rather than an externally imposed moniker.  Even after 1935, the term Persia did not vanish from the world’s lexicon. To this day, it lingers in cultural contexts and in the romance of history.

But the political and legal identity of the country remained, and remains, Iran.

The Pahlavi dynasty later opened the door to using either name interchangeably, but in formal statehood it is Iran that endures.

The urgency of current events -- attacks that have shaken capitals, drawn condemnations and sparked fears of wider conflagration -- brings into sharp relief the intricate layers of history that inform modern geopolitics.  

It is paradoxical that at a moment when drones and missiles crisscross the skies over Tehran, as United States and Israeli forces launch coordinated strikes dubbed "Operation Epic Fury" and Tehran fires back in a crescendo of missiles and drones, the world speaks once more of the land that was Persia.

The echoes of that venerable name resonate with astonishment and curiosity, even as historians remind that Iran was never a sudden reinvention but a reaffirmation of an identity long spoken within its own hearth.  

There is another anecdote. 

To avoid confusion between the two neighboring countries of Iran and Iraq, which were both involved in World War II and occupied by the Allies, Winston Churchill requested from the Iranian government during the Tehran Conference for the old and distinct name "Persia to be used by the United Nations [i.e., the Allies] for the duration of the common War". His request was approved immediately by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. 

The Americans, however, continued using Iran as they then had little involvement in Iraq to cause any such confusion.

                               An Iranian miniature painting titled, "Nighttime in a city" 

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