مردم

What it means

مردم (mardom) means people, the public, ordinary people, or folk. It is a collective noun used to refer to people in general, whether that means society at large, the people in a given place, or the folks around you. مردم carries no plural suffix because it is inherently collective: you say مردم زیادی (mardom-e ziâdi), “many people,” not مردم‌ها, though مردم‌ها does occasionally appear in colloquial speech for emphasis. A related word is آدم (âdam), which means a person or human being in a more individual sense. When Iranians say مردم چی میگن (mardom chi migun), “what will people say,” the word invokes collective social judgment, a concept that carries significant cultural weight. مردم is also used in political speech to mean the people as a collective entity, as in حقوق مردم (hoghugh-e mardom), the rights of the people.

How to use it

• مردم داشتن توی خیابون راه می‌رفتن (mardom dâshtan tu-ye khiyâbun râh miraftan) “People were walking in the street.”
• مردم چی میگن؟ (mardom chi migun?) “What will people say?”
• این مردم حق دارن ناراحت باشن (in mardom hagh dâran nârâhat bâshan) “These people have a right to be upset.”
• کلی مردم اومده بودن (koli mardom umade budan) “A whole lot of people had come.”

Cultural note

The phrase مردم چی میگن, “what will people say,” sits at the heart of a concept Iranian sociologists call the “gaze of the other” in Persian social life. Concern for public perception is woven into many everyday decisions around clothing, hospitality, family matters, and behavior in shared spaces. Using مردم in this way does not necessarily signal insecurity; it reflects the deeply social fabric of Iranian culture, where one’s standing in the community matters and is actively maintained.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab