Countries and Nationalities in Farsi: 21 Words

Short answer: Turkey in Farsi is Torkiye, Germany is Âlmân and France is Farânse. A lot of country names will sound familiar once you hear them, like Kânâdâ for Canada and Itâliâ for Italy. Iran itself is irân, an Iranian person is irâni, and the Persian language is fârsi.

Country names are some of the friendliest words you'll meet in Farsi. Say Kânâdâ or Itâliâ out loud and you already know what they mean. Others, like Torkiye or Arabestân, take a second look.

Below are 17 countries and 4 words for nationality and language. I've kept example sentences where the glossary has them, so you can say where you're from and what you're learning.

Countries in Farsi

If you want the Persian-speaking side of this map, the Farsi vs Dari vs Tajik guide explains how one language ends up with three names.

Nationalities and Languages

Notice the split: irâni is the person, fârsi is the language, and English uses one word, Persian, for both.

Three countries, one language

Persian is spoken as a national language in three countries: Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Iran calls it Farsi, Afghanistan calls it Dari, and Tajikistan calls it Tajik. The name changes partly for reasons of national identity, and in Tajikistan the alphabet changed too: it was switched to Latin in the 1920s and then to Cyrillic in 1939, during the Soviet years.

So when you learn Afghânestân from the table above, you're learning the name of a country where your Farsi will mostly be understood. The full story, with word comparisons, is in Farsi vs Dari vs Tajik.

Iran, Iranian, Persian

For Iranians, the word for Iran carries more than the modern state. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh keeps coming back to "the land of Iran" as a poetic homeland, and that older layer is still there when people say the name.

Inside Iran, people call themselves irâni. Abroad, identities stack: you'll hear Iranians describe themselves as Iranian-American, or as being of Iranian descent. In English some diaspora Iranians prefer to say Persian, for cultural and historical reasons, and that's why you'll see both words used for the same people. The glossary entry for Iran has more on this.

What this list leaves out

Cities are a separate topic, and they have their own page: cities of Iran. A few countries you might expect, like China, India or England, don't have glossary entries yet, so I've left them out instead of guessing. The list will grow as those entries are added.

Get it wrong and the worst that happens is a warm laugh and a story they’ll tell for years. Get it right — refuse the tea twice, accept on the third — and you’ll watch a face open up. You didn’t just speak Persian. You played the game.