Persian Names

Structure & order

Given-first, surname last; middle names are not customary.

[GIVEN] ([GIVEN2]) [FAMILY]

• Example structure cited by Cultural Atlas: "[first personal name] [optional second personal name] [surname]"; it is "not customary for Iranians to have a middle name."
• Before the 20th century most Iranians had no hereditary surname and were identified by a personal name plus patronymic and/or place-of-origin and titles.

Given names

Sources of given names (per Wikipedia and Iranian Genealogy):

• Islamic / Arabic-origin names entered the stock after the Muslim conquest of Persia (Mohammad, Ali, Hassan, Hossein, Fatemeh, Zahra). "Since the Muslim conquest of Persia, some names in Iran have been derived from Arabic, although the majority are Persian in origin."
• Theophoric compounds referencing God (Allah) are common, especially the -ollah suffix and Abd- ("servant of") prefix: Abdollāh ("servant of Allah"), Asadollāh ("lion of Allah"), Habibollāh ("beloved of Allah"), Ruhollāh ("spirit of Allah"); Abdolazim ("servant of the Great"). Compounds also honour Islamic figures (Abdolmohammad, Abdolali).
• Shahnameh & pre-Islamic Persian names: Wikipedia states "approximately 10%–15% of all Persian names are from Shahnameh." Male examples: Rostam, Sohrab, Kaveh, Esfandiar, Bahram; imperial/Achaemenid: Kourosh (Cyrus), Dāriush (Darius), Ardeshir. Female Shahnameh characters: Tahmineh, Manizheh, Farangis.
• Modern secular/lyrical given names: Shirin, Laleh ("tulip"), Nooshin, Elnaz, Sara (f.); Kamran, Arash, Abtin (m.). "Many names have a meaning" and are "often based on inspiring characters of old Persian literature."
• Gender is lexical, carried by the meaning of the stem (there is no productive grammatical gender suffix system on given names comparable to Slavic). See Gender Marking.

Family names & patronymics

Family names are a recent, legislated institution; see Surname Formation.

• History: an act of the Vosugh od-Dowleh government in 1919 introduced the use of surnames; the practice expanded and was made mandatory under Reza Shah (r. 1925–1941). A 1925 update required only "a forename and a surname," and "all adults were free to cho[o]se their own surname, which led to some siblings having different surnames." Hereditary inheritance only began once these self-chosen names were fixed in the 1920s–1930s.
• Common surname-forming suffixes:

• Geographic surnames are very common: Esfahani, Shirazi, Yazdi, Gharabaghi, Daghestani, Iravani, a place name plus -i.
• Prefixes treated as integral parts of family names: Amir, Bani, Key, Pur, Shah.
• Inheritance & marriage: patrilineal; "children take the surname of their father." A wife normally keeps her own surname; "women do not have to change their last name to their husband's at marriage" and may hyphenate it on if they choose. See Patronymics and Lineage.

How to address someone

See Salutations and Address.

• آقا Āghā ("Sir, Mr"), "a general term of respect" for men.
• خانم Khānom ("Mrs/Ms, lady"), the female counterpart.
• These honorifics commonly attach to the given name in everyday respectful use (e.g. Āghā-ye Reza, Khānom-e Sara) as well as to the surname in formal contexts.
• سید Seyyed / Sharif, honorific for men accepted as patrilineal descendants of Muhammad (via Ali).
• میرزا Mīrzā: historical honorific/title (clerk, prince when postposed); خان Khān: "a title for an honoured person"; استاد Ostad, "a master craftsperson, lecturer, or master of a profession."
• حاج / حاجی Hāj(i); one who has completed the pilgrimage to Mecca; شیخ Sheikh, head of a religious group (both noted as uncommon in modern secular usage).

Pitfalls for software

• Surnames are a 20th-century overlay, self-chosen in the 1920s–30s: so siblings can legitimately carry different surnames, and family names do not reliably reconstruct deep lineage. Genealogy/dedup software must not assume shared surname ⇒ shared family.
• Suffix ≠ origin marker alone: -ian/-yan is shared with Armenian; -i is also Arabic nisba; -zadeh/-pur/-nejad are patronymic-style but fixed and hereditary, not regenerated each generation (contrast Uzbek and Russian Names where the patronymic is re-derived).
• Wife keeps her surname: do not infer marriage/family grouping from a shared last name between spouses.
• Honorifics bind to the given name (Āghā/Khānom + first name) as often as to the surname; a parser that assumes "title + surname" will mis-segment.
• Script & romanization noise: Perso-Arabic orthography uses the zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) inside compound names (e.g. احمدی‌نژاد); inconsistent spacing/ZWNJ and one-to-many Latin transliterations (Khomeini/Khomeyni, Ruhollah/Rouhollah, Dariush/Daryoush) fragment the same name. Hamza (ء) handling adds further variants.
• Theophoric compounds are single given names, not given+surname: Ruhollah, Habibollah, Abdollah must not be split on the -ollah boundary.