Persian name

Many Persian names are attested in the Old Persian language and originate in the Achaemenid period, such as Dariosh, Koroush, Setareh, and Apameh.^{[citation needed]} Since the Muslim conquest of Persia, some names in Iran have been derived from Arabic, although the majority are Persian in origin.^{[citation needed][quantify]} Persian Christians have Arabic names indistinguishable from those of their Muslim neighbours, except for some explicitly Islamic names such as Mohammad, which are not usually borne by Christians.^{[citation needed]} They can also use Arabic derivations of Christian names (such as saints' names), or Greek, Neo-Aramaic, or Armenian names, as most Christian Iranians are Iranian Armenians, although there are also Iranian Assyrians and Iranian Georgians.^{[citation needed]} Iranian Zoroastrians, meanwhile, often use names of Avestan or Old Persian origin.^{[citation needed]}

Many Persian names originate from the Persian literature book, the Shahnameh or "Epic of Kings".^{[citation needed]} It was composed in the 10th century by Ferdowsi and is considered by many^[who?] to be the masterpiece of Persian literature.

Approximately 10%–15% of all Persian names are from Shahnameh.[citation needed]

Before 1919, the Iranian people did not use surnames. An act of the Vosugh od-Dowleh government in 1919 introduced the use of surnames,^[3] and the practice expanded during the reign of Reza Shah (r. 1925–1941). Reza Shah passed a law making it mandatory to have surnames. He himself chose Pahlavi as his surname, a name with Sasanian era roots. Before that, a person was often told apart from others by a combination of prefixes and suffixes attached to their name. If it were omitted, that person might be taken for someone else.^[4] Since the adoption of surnames, Ahmadi has become the most popular surname in Iran.^[5]

Many Iranian families adopted surnames derived from occupations, titles, or social roles.^[6] For example, the surname Moazenzadeh (literally "descendant of a muezzin") reflects this tradition, and is notably borne by Salim and Rahim Moazenzadeh Ardabili, both sons of Karim Moazzen Zadeh Ardabili and celebrated Iranian Quran reciters and muezzins.^[7][8][9]

In many cases people were known by the name of the district, city, town, or even the village from which they came by using the locality's name as a suffix, for example: Tehrani, Tabrizi, Mahabadi, Mazandarani, Kordestani, Zanjani, Ghomi, Esfahani, Kermanshahi, Ardabili, Hamadani, Yazdi, and Shirazi. The same rule is followed for the many millions of Iranians who have surnames of regions or cities of the Caucasus region. The latter was forcefully ceded in the course of the 19th century to Imperial Russia through the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828). Examples of common Iranian surnames in this regard are Gharabaghi, Daghestani, Darbandi, Shirvani, Iravani, Ganjavi, Gorjestani, Nakhjevani, and Lankarani.

Among many other secularization and modernization reforms, surnames were enforced by Reza Shah, following similar contemporary patterns in Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and later in Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser.^[10]