Why are Iranians called Persians even though Persia no longer exists?

Answer 1

The original name Iran (= Aryan) was overlaid in the west by the Greek name Persia. This persisted until modern times. In 1935 the Shah (king) tried to reinstate Iran as the name, but this was not successful and in 1949 either name use was accepted. In recent years international use has accepted Iran, however the word Persian is used in some contexts.

Answer 2

Iranian and Persian are not interchangeable words today. Persian refers to an ethnicity, but Iranian refers to a nationality. This distinction is very common in multicultural countries, such as Iran. Persians make up around 60% of the Iranian population. There are significant Kurdish and Azeri minorities in Iran, along with less significant minorities.

For example, we can see the same sort of distinction in the US. A person will be American as a nationality (i.e. he is an American citizen), but he may be ethnically French (i.e. his grandparents came from France).

Another more recent phenomenon is that Iranians who have fled Iran because of the regime change in 1979 and their children will identify as Persian because they do not recognize the current government of Iran.

Answer 3

Until 1935 Iran was called Persia.

Persia was one of many countries where the exonym (the name other people call a country) and the endonym (the name the citizens of that country call it) were different. This came about mainly due to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran "Persis", meaning land of the Persians and this has continued long after the fall of Ancient Greece. A current example would be Germany. Germans have an endonym of Deutschland, but English speakers call it Germany, French speakers call it Allemagne, Polish speakers called it Niemcy, etc. The Persian endonym was Iran and in 1935, Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran asked that all countries around the world use the term "Iran" in all future correspondence with the state (as opposed to the historic exonym Persia). It has stuck.

Answer 4

The word Persian went out withe the assumption of Islamic power after expulsion of the last king.