The Iranian Surname Project is an in-progress initiative with the goal of documenting every Iranian surname. It seeks to take advantage of the relatively recent emergence of surnames in Iran by inviting Iranians around the world to submit information about their surnames. The Project will record these surnames’ meanings, origins, and variations. The ultimate aim of the Project is to democratize Iranian genealogy, but the data will be useful for other disciplines.
Do you know the story of why your Iranian surname was chosen? Do you have a unique Iranian surname? Do you want to ensure that a surname is included in the Project? We want to hear from you! Look at the variables that the project records, and please fill out the form below:
Variables
Surname (Farsi): The surname written in Farsi, in Farsi alphabetical order.
Surname (Romanized): The surname written in the Latin alphabet using a modified version of the United Nations’ 2012 Persian Romanization System. The only modifications are the following:
- The ezāfe (the relational suffix between two words), though pronounced, is not written unless it is written as ‘ی’ in Farsi as part of the surname.
- e.g., سادات آشوری is romanized as Sādāt-e Āšuri under the UN system, but is romanized as Sādāt Āšuri in the Iranian Surname Project
- When words are separated by a nim-fāsele (half-space), the second word is capitalized. This modification better highlights the components of surnames.
- e.g., احمدآبادی is romanized as Ahmadābādi under the UN system, but is romanized as AhmadĀbādi in the Iranian Surname Project Project
Alternate Spellings: The variations of the surname’s spelling in Farsi and English.
- E.g., the surname Javāheri (جواهری) has “Javaheri, Javaaheri, Djavaheri” in the Alternate Spellings cell.
- E.g., the surname Ra’isi (رئیسی) has “Raisi, رییسی” in the Alternate Spellings cell.
Surname Category: Coding the surname with single letters to indicate what type of surname it is.
- E.g., Hāshemi Rafsanjāni (a patronymic and toponymic surname) is coded as P in the first Surname Category cell and T in the second Surname Category cell
- Patronymic: a surname deriving from an ancestor’s name
- Toponymic: a surname deriving from the name of a location (e.g., province, town, geographical feature)
- Occupational: a surname deriving from an occupation, title, or position
- Affiliational: a surname deriving from the name of an ethnicity, religion, or tribe
- Descriptive: a surname deriving from an adjective or noun unrelated to any of the above categories
- ?: a surname whose category is unclear
Meaning: Translates or explains the meaning of the surname.
- e.g., Hāshemi Rafsanjāni has “from Hashem, from Rafsanjan; (Rafsanjan is a city in Rafsanjan county, Kerman province, Iran; 30.403224, 55.990596)
Notes: Provides miscellaneous information about the surname and the family to which it belongs. This information could include ethnicity, religion, seyyed status, the story of why the surname was chosen, related families, genealogy.
- e.g., for the surname Eshāghof, the following is written in the Notes cell: One family with this surname is related to an EshāghPur family. They are Jewish. That family’s surname refers to Eshāgh Massaband (1867-1939) of Kashan. He married Rahel Noriel and had at least eight children: sons Asher Haim (1883-1984), Shaban (1891-1965), Eliahu (1893-1967), Yehuda (1896-1984), Morad (1900-1994), Ebrahim (1901-1975), and Musa (1907-2000), and daughter Khorshid. Shaban, Eliahu, Morad, and Musa adopted the Eshāghof surname.
Iranian Genealogy 