پدرشوهر

What it means

پدرشوهر (pedar-shohar) is the Persian word for “father-in-law” specifically when the speaker is the wife. It is a compound of پدر (pedar, “father”) and شوهر (shohar, “husband”). Literally: “husband’s father.” A wife uses this word for her husband’s father. A husband uses a different word for his wife’s father (پدرزن, pedar-zan).

Persian’s four-way in-law split

Persian refuses to lump in-laws together. Each relationship has its own word, marked by direction of marriage:

• پدرشوهر (pedar-shohar) “husband’s father” (used by the wife)
• مادرشوهر (mâdar-shohar) “husband’s mother” (used by the wife)
• پدرزن (pedar-zan) “wife’s father” (used by the husband)
• مادرزن (mâdar-zan) “wife’s mother” (used by the husband)

If a wife says “my پدرشوهر had a stroke,” she means her husband’s father. If her husband says “my پدرزن had a stroke,” he means a different person, his wife’s father. They are not interchangeable. They are not the same person. They have a precise, non-overlapping meaning, and Iranians do not casually swap them.

Cultural note

The relationship with پدرشوهر in Iranian family culture is typically less fraught than with مادرشوهر, but it carries its own weight. In traditional households the husband’s father is the patriarch of the extended family, and the wife who marries in is expected to show respect through specific small acts: pouring tea first, addressing him with the formal pronoun شما (shomâ), standing when he enters the room. Modern urban Iranian families have softened most of these protocols but rarely abolished them.

The پدرشوهر is also, in many families, the financial backbone for a young couple in the early years of marriage: helping with the down payment for a home, contributing to a wedding, lending capital for a small business. This creates obligation and gratitude in both directions, and is one of the reasons why the in-law relationship in Iran is rarely the boundaried, distant arrangement that Anglo families often default to.

Examples

• پدرشوهرم بازنشسته شد (pedar-shoharam bâzneshaste shod) “My father-in-law retired”
• پدرشوهرم خونه براش خرید (pedar-shoharam khune barâsh kharid) “My father-in-law bought him a house”

Mnemonic

pedar-SHOHAR → پدرشوهر. Pedar (father) + shohar (husband). Father-of-the-husband. The wife’s word for him.