"I'm Persian"

Two of my best friends in CA are Persian. Bahareh had the biggest boobs in our condo complex, and her husband wasn't half bad either

Possibly Persians prefer to disassociate themselves from Iranians? I do that certain people from Taiwan refer to themselves and the country as Formosa. They've never learned to be happy with the Komintang contingent, and if you don't like the way I spelled Komintang, you can go do it yourself.

Toronto has a huge Persian community.

Some people seem to exclusively self-identify as Persian, others are Persian-Iranian, others are Iranian.

It seems to be based in when they/their families left the ME.

I have a distant relative, who calls himself Persian and I have met someone who also says Persian
As far as I understand it means they think about and feel for the Persian culture and don´t like the new regime.

Interesting! Thank you all.

The Persian language is still called 'Persian'. We still have many "Persian carpets" sold here and we do have a "Persian restaurant' in a our town.
Nowruz is the Persian New Year, ... ... ...

I continue to use the term Persian, and that jackass Finn has sneered at me about it before. I've known a lot of Persians since the 1970s (there used to be lots of them attending university in the United States) and they were all OK with the the use of the term, and frequently used it themselves. My hairdresser in Columbus, Ohio was Persian, and that was how she described herself. The first time i went to her, i asked her about her accent, and she said she is Persian. So i asked her if her name was Shahrzad, and she just laughed, but was also excited that i not only knew the story, but knew how Persians say the name. (Westerners tend to write it and pronounce it Scheherazade--i don't know where they came up with that BS.) As one will with one's hairdresser, we had long conversations whenever i went there. She told me a lot about Iran, and about the revolution, and how she had fled the country. I once told her that i had stayed with her because she cuts curly hair so well. She just laughed and said that all Persians have curly hair.

Jian Ghomeshi is a successful and popular radio host, writer and musician in Toronto. He was born in London, and raised in Canada. His morning radio program, "Q," is the most popular program in Canada, and is also broadcast in more than one hundred U.S. cities. He uses the terms Persian and Iranian interchangeably. When asked about it once on his program, he basically said it doesn't matter to him, he thinks of himself as Persian or Iranian, and doesn't care bout the labels.

The big carpet company in Toronto is called the Turko-Persian Rug company.

I went to a university that had an excellent petroleum engineering school. There were a lot of Iranians at the school. I can't recall any of them identifying as Persian.

I consider myself fairly culturally literate and I'm surprised I didn't know that either name was acceptable.

I feel smarter today!

As an add in, I've known a few people who identified themselves as Persian also.

A Pre-Raphaelite version of Shahrzad. The name means "frees the city," and is usually rendered "Savior of the City." She wove her tales for the thousand nights and the one night, to save her own life and the life of her sister, Dunyazad. Dunyazad means "frees the world," and is usually rendered "Savior of the People."

I like this image, because she actually looks like a Persian.

My friends in CA told me their parents fled Iran because of the Ayatollah Khomeini. They never referred to themselves as Iranian, they were Persian.

Same with my friends and clients who identified as Persian - many many Persians came to LA after the regime change.

edit - I'm not so sure of the word 'after'. The process likely started before the roof came down on them.

I think they were the lucky ones; the wealthy Persians could leave the country. I’m not sure which one had the wealthy parent but they paid cash for their condo. The poorer Persians were not so lucky.

I agree, the persians I've had as friends (2 couples) and the several I've had as friendly clients of the firm I worked for at the time, was proj mgr for, were all ok financially.

This reminds me of a book I liked, Lolita in Tehran. I'd reread it if I had a copy at hand.

Do tell. To me she looks like she made the SP and lived on the Grand Concourse and might have gone to the Bronx High School of Science?

Jian? He's great. I listen to him often. Such a great show and great interviewer.