English Words of Persian Origin

As Indo-European languages, English and Persian have many words of common Proto-Indo-European origin, and many of these cognate words often have similar forms. Examples of these include: English (Mother) and Persian (Mādar), English (Father) and Persian (Pedar), English (Daughter) and Persian (Dokhtar), English (Sister) and Persian (Khwāhar), English (Brother) and Persian (Barādar) and English (Name) and Persian (Nam). However, this article will be concerned with loanwords, that is, words in English that derive from Persian, either directly, or more often, via one or more intermediary languages.

Many words of Persian origin have made their way into the English language through different, often circuitous, routes. Some of them, such as "paradise", date to cultural contacts between the Persians and the ancient Greeks or Romans and through Greek and Latin found their way to English. Persian as the second important language of Islam has influenced many languages in the Muslim world, and its words have found their way beyond the Muslim world.

Persia remained largely impenetrable to English-speaking travelers well into the 19th century. Persia was protected from Europe by overland trade routes that passed through territory inhospitable to foreigners, while trade at Persian ports in the Persian Gulf was in the hands of locals. In contrast, intrepid English traders operated in Mediterranean seaports of the Levant from the 1570s, and some vocabulary describing features of Ottoman culture found their way into the English language. Thus many words in the list below, though originally from Persian, arrived in English through the intermediary of Ottoman Turkish language.

Many words also came into English through Hindustani during the British Raj. Persian was the lingua franca of India before British rule. Other words of Persian origin found their way into European languages — and eventually reached English at second-hand — through the Moorish-Christian cultural interface in the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages thus being transmitted through Arabic.

View a list of Persain words in English Language:

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