| As some of you probably know,
there is a term in Avesta called "a-eer-ya-nem va-ee-jo",
namely the land of Aeers'. This term refers to a certain
plateau which the Indo-Iranians selected for their settlement.
By passage of time, the term "Aeer"
changed to "Er" and later to "Ir".
"Er" or "Ir",
in the ancient languages of the time, meant NOBLE. Today
the equivalent would be "Aazadeh ækCqA".
However it must be noted that the
Europeans referred to that ancient race as the Ar (sound
like the letter "R"), and by adding the French suffix
of attribution "ien", the term became "Ar-ien".
The same of course, applies to "Perse" and "Persien"
in French.
Although, some of our very own writers and
historians such as the late scholar Dr. Moin, considered and
took the French "ien" as if it was a Persian
suffix denoting place, land or location, the "An"
in "IrAn" is merely a transformation from
singular to plural. |