When did we start calling the Persian Gulf the Arabian Gulf?

[Sandpiper]

I've just recently started to notice this.


When did this Orwellian name swap take place?

And will we be changing the name of Iran to "Freedomhaterland" on all American globes and maps?

[seemslikeadream]

1. To: National Geographic Society

Dear National Geographic Editors,

We the undersigned, through this letter, protest your irresponsible and unscientific actions.

This letter is in concern of publication of a map by your organization, which, according to all international organizations, is fraudulent and distorted, and its publication guarantees the violation of undeniable international legal rights.

It is a proven scholarly fact that the name of the Persian Gulf is a genuine name, with historical roots, and using any fraudulent names such as the “Arabian Gulf”, and islands “Occupied by Iran” is in fact inducing political animosity.

We did not expect National Geographic, as a prestigious international scientific institution, to ignore the proven obvious, and damage its own reputation on the basis of political intentions, and thus create an atmosphere of public mistrust in its content, and hurt the national pride of the millions of Persian speakers while doing so.

While announcing our disgust at such a heresy, we demand an immediate editorial review and correction of this publication by the National Geographic.

Sincerely,


http://www.petitiononline.com/persian/petition.html

I think I heard National Geographic changed their minds

[happyslug]

4. Historical Split, but showing a growing anti-Iranian tendency.

The Arabs want to call it the Arabian Gulf, while the everyone else wants to call it the Persian Gulf. I prefer the term Persian Gulf for I do NOT like using two similar names for near by body of waters. For example the Persian Gulf empties into the Arabian Sea.

A further complication is that during the time of the Ancient Greeks and Romans till the 1800s what we now call the Red Sea was called by many Europeans the "Arabian Gulf". Thus another reason to use Persian Gulf instead of "Arabian Gulf". You do NOT want to use an "old" name for one body of water as the name for another body of water, it just causes confusion.

Note: There is a fight going on over the name of the Persian Gulf. People from Iran have set up Computers programs that systematical changes other computers computer to call the use of "Arabian Gulf" as an error and to substitute "Persian Gulf" instead (Try a yahoo or google search for either term and you will see the fight).

Pro-Persian Gulf sites:
http://www.iranchamber.com/geography/articles/persian_gulf_history.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/activity/i/isg/persiangulffactsheet.pdf#search='The%20Lore,%20Laws%20and%20Language%20of%20GEOGRAPHICAL%20NAMES%20Persian%20Arabian%20Gulf'


United Nations Place name site (Just an index of a book that costs $14.95 to buy):
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/Websites-links.htm

Paper on international names for geographical objects (includes discussion of various names for the same body of water worldwide and how in most situation the difference in name is unimportant but sometime it is important):
http://www.geoedu.snu.ac.kr/eastsea/10%C8%B8%BC%BC%B9%CC%B3%AA/Session%201%C3%D6%C1%BE/Naftali%20Kadmon.htm

[rzemanfl]

2. It was a trailer to the "freedom fries" thing. n/t

[WoodrowFan]

3. I've heard it called that for a long time

I've heard European and Middle Eastern students call it the "Arabian Gulf" for 20 years now. Only the American, Brit and Iranian students seemed to call it the Persian Gulf. I was very abruptly corrected once by a Palestinian student when I referred to the "Persian Gulf." He was quite offended.

[seemslikeadream]

5. National Geographic's name for Persian Gulf riles Iranians

National Geographic's name for Persian Gulf riles Iranians
Los Angeles Times

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Tehran -- They were just two small words, a parenthetical aside on a National Geographic map. But that's all it took to get fiercely proud Iranians to rise up this week against what they saw as an attack on their history.

In its latest world atlas, National Geographic added the name "Arabian Gulf" in parentheses beneath "Persian Gulf" on a map to label the body of water that cuts along the coasts of Iran and its Arab neighbors.

The use of "Arabian Gulf," and the implication that Iran may somehow be losing its historical claims to dominance of the ancient seas, pierced the cultural pride that pervades the land once known as Persia. It gave fresh life to the long and often bloody tensions between Iranians and Arabs and added fuel to a widely held Iranian suspicion that Arabs have been quietly lobbying for years to change the name of the gulf.

So keen was the perceived slight that it brought a fleeting unity to Iran's far-flung political spectrum. From the left to the right to the disaffected, Iranians blamed the "Zionists," accused the Arabs and lambasted the Americans.

The government banned National Geographic from selling its publications here or sending journalists into the country.

Even computer techies were stirred to action and pulled off a "Google bomb," manipulating the search engine to obtain a high ranking. Type "Arabian Gulf" on Google, and the first link is to a Web site that announces, "The gulf you are looking for does not exist. Try Persian Gulf."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/02/MNGPQA4V7B1.DTL


The Iranian government led two resolutions in the United Nations to officially recognize that body of water as the Persian Gulf. The first announcement was made through the document UNAD, 311/Qen on March 5, 1971 and the second was UNLA 45.8.2 (C) on August 10, 1984.

There is a dispute over the name of the Persian Gulf and whether it should be called "Arabian Gulf" or "Persian Gulf".

In possibly every map printed before 1960 and in most modern international treaties, documents and maps this body of water is known by the name "Persian Gulf", reflecting traditional usage since the Greek geographers Strabo and Ptolemy and the geopolitical realities of the time with a powerful Persian Empire (= Iran) comprising the whole northern coastline and a scattering of local emirates on the Arabian coast. But by the 1960s and with the rise of Arab nationalism, some Arab countries, including the ones bordering the Persian Gulf, started to use the Arabic term "ÇáÎáíÌ ÇáÚÑÈí" (al-Khaleej al-Arabee; Arab Gulf or Arabian Gulf) to refer to this waterway. This coupled with the decreasing influence of Iran on the political and economic priorities of the English speaking Western World led to increasing acceptance, in regional polictics and the mostly petroleum-related business, of the new alternative naming convention "Arabian Gulf".
http://www.answers.com/topic/dispute-over-the-name-of-the-persian-gulf