English
Iran
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ɪˈɹɑːn/, /ɪˈɹæn/
  • (America) IPA: /ɪˈɹɑːn/, /ɪˈɹæn/, /aɪˈɹæn/
Proper noun
  1. A country in Western Asia, official=Islamic Republic of Iran.
    • 2005, Massoume Price, ed., Iran's Diverse Peoples, ABC-Clio, page xiii:
      "Iran is a vast and ancient country in a strategic location in the Middle East. It borders Russia, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf."
    • ca. 1675, Jean Chardin (Sir John Chardin), Travels in Persia, 1673-1677, fasc. reprint 1988, Dover, page 126:
      "The Persians, in naming their country, make use of one word, which they indifferently pronounce Iroun, and Iran."
  2. (literary, technical) regions inhabited by the Iranian peoples.
    • 1990, Hubert Darke, "Cambridge History of Iran" in Encyclopedia Iranica, volume 4, page 724:
      "[The] Cambridge History of Iran [is] a survey of the history and historical geography of the land which is present-day Iran, as well as other territories inhabited by peoples of Iranian descent."
    • 1985, J. M. Cooke, "The Rise of the Achaemenids" in Cambridge Historiy of Iran, volume 2, page 290:
      "[W]e may surmise that there was a strong sense of Iranian unity lending solidarity to the eastern half of the empire. It is only in the generations after Alexander, in Eudemus and in Eratosthenes (ap. Strabo), that we find mention of the concept of a greater nation of Iran (Arianē) stretching from the Zagros to the Indus; but the sense of unity must have been there, for Herodotus tells us that the Medes were formerly called Arioi, and Darius I (followed by Xerxes) in his inscriptions proclaims himself an Iranian (Ariya) by race - he speaks of himself in ascending order as an Achaemenid, a Persian and an Iranian (Naqsh-i Rustam)."
    • 1882, James Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta, volume 1 (SBE, volume 31), Oxford UP, page 7, xxviii:
      "Kavi means a king, but it is particularly used of the kings belonging to the second and most celebrated of the two mythical dynasties of Iran."
      "One certain fact is the occurrence of geographical names [Bactria, Sogdiana, etc] in Vendidad I, which are obviously intended to describe the earliest homes of the Iranian races whose lore was the Avesta."
    • 1909, John Huston Finley (ed.), "Iran" in Nelson's Perpetual Loose-leaf Encyclopaedia, volume 6, page 479:
      "Iran. in early times, the name applied to the great Asiatic plateau which comprised the entire region from the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and Russian Turkestan on the north to the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Sea on the west and south, and extending to the Indus on the east, likewise comprising the modern Afghanistan and the territory to the north of it as far as the Jaxartes River."
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