Amusing Language Names

[Vijay]

Persia is not "deprecated," and Iran is still called Persia.

[Travis B.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Iran

Apparently the name of Iran is still up for debate.

[Whimemsz]

Most of the terms used in English to refer to other cultural groups/languages aren't of pejorative origin -- and particularly for groups that English speakers have only had relatively recent knowledge of, the name is usually just the other group's borrowed endonym! This is the case for most of the names that have been listed in this thread so far.

The only ones that don't fall under that category, in fact, are: Slave(y) (originally derogatory, as noted), possibly Hare, (Halfway River) Beaver (I think), Moose Cree, Duke of York, Gros Ventre (could be considered historically derogatory but is very widely used, including by tribal members in English), Crow, Creek, Port Sandwich, Cuitlatec (derogatory, but the Cuitlatecs are all dead now, so...it would seem there's been no effort to find an alternate name), and Big and Little Nambas (not really derogatory, just descriptive of salient cultural practices); I don't actually know the origin of the more specific names for various Miao/Hmong varieties although it looks like the intermediate source is Chinese?

Anyway, many or perhaps most of these names are used by their own people when speaking English.

[Salmoneus]

Calling Iran "Persia" sounds extremely archaic and thoroughly racist. [indeed, over the last year I've seen a number of jokes about how the Tories are so reactionnary that they might even call Iran "Persia"]

Persian, however, survives as the self-designation of a certain flavour of ethnic Iranian diaspora, although my impression is that even that is dying out (as the number of generations that have passed since anyone used the word 'Persia' seriously increases).

Of course, 'Persia' continues to be the primary name for the area between the rise of Cyrus and the fall of the Qajars.

[Travis B.]

Calling Iran "Persia" sounds extremely archaic and thoroughly racist. [indeed, over the last year I've seen a number of jokes about how the Tories are so reactionnary that they might even call Iran "Persia"]

Persian, however, survives as the self-designation of a certain flavour of ethnic Iranian diaspora, although my impression is that even that is dying out (as the number of generations that have passed since anyone used the word 'Persia' seriously increases).

Of course, 'Persia' continues to be the primary name for the area between the rise of Cyrus and the fall of the Qajars.

The impression I got was that the name of the modern country of Iran is Iran, with Persia being dated, but the proper name of the Persian language in English is Persian.

[Linguoboy]

Calling Iran "Persia" sounds extremely archaic and thoroughly racist. [indeed, over the last year I've seen a number of jokes about how the Tories are so reactionnary that they might even call Iran "Persia"]

Persian, however, survives as the self-designation of a certain flavour of ethnic Iranian diaspora, although my impression is that even that is dying out (as the number of generations that have passed since anyone used the word 'Persia' seriously increases).

I couldn't abide by all my Iranian brethren. When somebody says: We're from Persia. No, we're not Iranian. We're from Persia. As if that makes a big difference. And people say: Oh, you're from Persia. Oh, you mean next to Assyria, Mesopotamia and Thrace. What a noble race. I mean, we speak like a Persian cat. Yes, a sweet Persian cat, yes. There's no Iranian cat. No, Iranian cat? There's a bomb under the body warmer.

[Pabappa]

Isnt the difference that Persian is an ethnicity, but Iran is a geographical nation? Iran is to Persia as the UK is to England, or, more confusingly perhaps, as Russia is to Russians. there are lots of minority cultures around that arent just recent immigrants. the difference being that the UK is majority English and Russia is majority Russian but Persians are only a bit over 50% and maybe even not quite 50% .

[Vijay]

No. Persia is another name for Iran.

[Richard W]

Isnt the difference that Persian is an ethnicity, but Iran is a geographical nation? Iran is to Persia as the UK is to England,...

Please compare like with like, e.g. Persia v. Iran. Fars is indeed *part* of Iran. 'Iran' is the land of the Aryans, which of course rather downgrades the substantial Turkic element of the population.

[Travis B.]

Etymologically Persia is to Iran what Holland is to the Netherlands; yes, in both cases the former etymologically refers to part of the latter, but in many languages the former is so semantically bleached that the two might as well be synonymous.

[Linguoboy]

Isnt the difference that Persian is an ethnicity, but Iran is a geographical nation?

Are there really "Persian" minorities outside of Iran which aren't also "Iranian"? Speakers of Dari Persian in Afghanistan, for instance, identify variously as "Tajiks", "Hazara", "Aimaqs", etc. but not as "Persians".

[Travis B.]

Isnt the difference that Persian is an ethnicity, but Iran is a geographical nation?

Are there really "Persian" minorities outside of Iran which aren't also "Iranian"? Speakers of Dari Persian in Afghanistan, for instance, identify variously as "Tajiks", "Hazara", "Aimaqs", etc. but not as "Persians".

I think Pabappa is referring to Persian as an ethnicity within Iran, in contrast to non-Persian ethnicities within Iran, such as Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Lurs, Balochis, and so on.

[dhok]

reminder that if Africanists were responsible for classifying the languages of Eurasia, we'd be debating whether Khitan constituted a member of Mongoloid

[Travis B.]

Mongoloid

My initial thought when I read this was whether this word was kosher to use in any context...

[dhok]

Mongoloid

My initial thought when I read this was whether this word was kosher to use in any context...

I mean, Igboid and Bantoid are.

[Travis B.]

Mongoloid

My initial thought when I read this was whether this word was kosher to use in any context...

I mean, Igboid and Bantoid are.

Yes, but it had two common meanings historically - referring to East Asians in a racialist fashion, and referring to people with Down Syndrome - which are now both deprecated.

[Kuchigakatai]

Yes, but it had two common meanings historically - referring to East Asians in a racialist fashion, and referring to people with Down Syndrome - which are now both deprecated.

Yes, dhok knows that, and in fact that's his point: "igboid" and "bantoid" are as bad as "mongoloid". He's saying it's unfortunate African linguistic clade names tend to be like this.

[Vijay]

Have most of y'all ever thought of what people who actually speak these languages think of any of these terms?

[Travis B.]

Yes, but it had two common meanings historically - referring to East Asians in a racialist fashion, and referring to people with Down Syndrome - which are now both deprecated.

Yes, dhok knows that, and in fact that's his point: "igboid" and "bantoid" are as bad as "mongoloid". He's saying it's unfortunate African linguistic clade names tend to be like this.

Oh, to be honest, I did not know that "Igboid" or "Bantoid" were meant to be racialist, aside from the use of "Bantu" by apartheid South Africa an explicitly racialist fashion.

[Travis B.]

Have most of y'all ever thought of what people who actually speak these languages think of any of these terms?

In the case of Persian and Persia, from what I'm reading sentiment amongst actual Persian people are fairly divided overall, with there being both people for the use of these terms and people against the use of these terms.

As for Mongoloid it seems agreed upon that its usage to refer to Down Syndrome is highly offensive. Mongoloid being used to refer to East Asians seems to be considered not as offensive, but there are people who wish that the term be retired in favor of simply East Asian.