Description
Book SynopsisIn the mid-1920s, Iran abolished honorary titles and honorifics and required people to adopt family names. H. E. Chehabi describes the public debates surrounding what was an important state-building effort. He traces the legislative measures and decrees that constituted the reform and explores the surnames Iranians chose or invented for themselves.
Trade ReviewIn this concise and stimulating study of personal names in modern Iran, Chehabi provides an excellent manual of contemporary Persian onomastics while also shedding light on the complex relations between individuals and political society. Through reforms of their personal names, citizens became clearly identified as taxpayers, voters, and soldiers. Anthropologists and historians will find here a wealth of examples to help them understand how, thanks to their new civil status, Iranians looked at themselves, wishing to be perceived as part of the ‘civilized’ (i.e. Westernized) world. -- Yann Richard
The project of imposing permanent patronyms on its populations is surely one of the earliest examples of state standardization. And, as Houchang Chehabi realizes in this luminous volume on Iran, it is a perfect lens for understanding modern state making. Deeply researched, bristling with thought-provoking aperçus, humor, and international comparisons, it enlarges our intellectual horizon. -- James C. Scott
