What it means
سرور (server) is borrowed directly from English and has become the standard word in Persian for a computer server, whether a physical machine or a cloud-based service. Iranians use it exactly as English speakers do: a system that stores, manages, and delivers data to other computers. Because Persian has no native equivalent for this concept, the English term entered the language unchanged and is now completely standard in both formal writing and everyday speech. A close related term is هاست (host), which refers more specifically to a web hosting service rather than the server hardware itself.
How to use it
- سرور خراب شده. (server kharab shode.) “The server is down.”
- دادهها روی سرور ذخیره میشن. (dade-ha ru-ye server zakhire mishan.) “The data is stored on the server.”
- سرور ما تو ایران نیست. (server-e ma tu Iran nist.) “Our server is not in Iran.”
- باید سرور رو ریاستارت کنیم. (bayad server ro restart konim.) “We need to restart the server.”
Cultural note
Server infrastructure has particular significance in Iran because the government operates a national intranet system called the شبکه ملی اطلاعات (shabake-ye melli-ye ettelaat), or National Information Network, which routes domestic traffic through domestic servers. This means the word سرور often appears in conversations about internet filtering and access to content. Iranians are generally aware of where servers are located, since content hosted on servers inside Iran behaves very differently from content on overseas servers when filters are applied.