Most of the Iranians I know prefer to Persian to Iranian, especially those who aren’t muslim.

The name itself is Persian/Farsi. This was a common surname for poets from Delhi in the Mughal court.

^ Actually, Bush went the other way and used the pejorative term for ‘Pakistani’. Though, he would have been right if Pakistan was a real ‘-stan’. I guess Indi or Indiani doesn’t work because the word ‘India’ is an English word(?). Bharati and Hindustani on the other hand work because Bharat and Hindustan are proper words in local languages.

Sin..Pakistanian??…damn, I wonder how Bush missed it for the last 6 yrs. It would have ranked up there with Strategry, Nooclear…etc. And of course, Pakistanian would be ridiculous

Any idea what determines, “anian” vs “ani”? Also why not Indiani or Lankani or Burmanian?

Re: Irani vs. Iranian, I was under the impression from most of my Iran-born Farsi friends that “Iranian” is very much a foreign construct, one that they find annoying. Hence the “Irani not Iranian”; one of them likened it to someone being called Pakistani vs. Pakistanian, or Iraqi and Iraqian. Dehlavi is not, to the best of my knowledge either Parsi or Farsi, but he’s definitely Pakistani; I don’t know a great deal more about him.

Sorry, I also do not understand the distinction. I always thought the term Irani was used for Parsis in India, whereas Iranian was used for, well, Iranians (and yes, I know that Parsis originate in Iran, but I’m not talking about origins, I’m talking about current community self-identification). Panahi seems to be the latter. I’m not sure if Dehlavi fits into either. Maybe I’m wrong and/or you’re joking. Who knows. Either way, edify me!

Can you explain? I didn’t realize one was preferred over the other.

Sin, are you absolutely sure about that? I was watching SRK’s auto-biographical documentary recently (The Inner and Outer Worlds of SRK) and there was a scene where he WAS doing a voice-over for The Incredibles!!