Persian Names

8/8/2019 Persian Names

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Whats in a Persian Name?

Zina SaadiComputational Linguist,

Middle Eastern Languages Specialist

June 7, 2007

Proprietary Information of Basis Technology Corp.


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Why Learn About Names?

Lists of names used to retrieve information about similar events in

different languages Transliteration

(fa)

Mahmud Amadinedschad(de)

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad(en)

(ko)

(el)

((ar

(ur)

'(he)

(ja)

-

(zh)

Basis provides solutions for Name Transliteration in

Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, Korean, Pashto, Urdu

(ru)


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Name Transliteration vs. Matching

News analysts are interested in news regarding a particular person

Spelling variants for an individuals name are important Matching

EN: Jamal Mirsadeghi

FA:

Transliteration

EN: Jamal Mirsadeqi (less common)

Matching

/gh/ /q/

Matching

Prefix

Spelling Variants

Spelling Variants

FA:

Basis meets these challenges with providing

solutions for Name Transliteration & Matching


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Name Format in Farsi

Before the Rule of the Shah

Lack of surnames Combination of affixes and

given names

Since the Rule of Shah (1925)

The Shah required surnames Name-Affixes remained inuse

Given Name(s) + Surname(s)

Reign of Reza Shah (1925-1941)


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Pre-Shah Name Affixes Specifications

Attached or separated

Format

Examples: Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi

Haji Mirza Hassan Tabrizi

Affixes give more insight about the person:

Social class (education, respect)

Religion Affiliation

Origin: city where a person is born

Prefix(es) +Given Name(s)+ Suffix(es)


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Pre-Shah Name Format

Name-Prefixes

Examples:

Respect: Aqa/Agha / (meaning: sir/mister, borrowed from Turkish)

Mir (meaning: master, contraction of Amir/)

Hajji (person who completed the pilgrimage to Mecca)

Religion: Darvish/Dervish (Sufi mystic)

Mulla (Islamic religious figure)Seyyed/Sayyeda / (descendant of Prophet Mohammed)


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Pre-Shah Name Format (Cont.)

Name-Suffixes

Examples:

Locality: Tihrani, Isfahani, Shirazi

Descendent:

Alavi (1st Imam: Ali ibn Abu Talib)

Jafari/Jafri (6th Imam: Jafar as-Sadiq)

Mousavi/Kazemi / (8th Imam: Musa Al-Kazim)

Naqavi (10th Imam: Ali al-Hadi al-Naqavi)

Actual Personal Names:

Mulla Sadra/Mollasadra (17th century Persian philosopher)

Seyyed Ali Naqi Naqvi ( ) (Indian historian)


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Pre-Shah Dual Functionality Affixes

Respect vs. Descent:

Mirza Name-Prefix: respect for a literate person

Name-Suffix: royal descent

Examples:

Mirza Ali (17th century Persian physician)

Iskander Ali Mirza (Persian: )(Urdu: )First President Pakistan (1956-1958)

Descendent of Mir Jafar (monarchical ruler in Bengal)


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Locality vs. Origin:

Karbalai Name-Prefix: pilgrimage to Karbala (Iraq)

Name-Suffix: from Karbala

Mashhadi Name-Prefix: pilgrimage to Mashad (Iran)Name-Suffix: from Mashad


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Names since the rule of Reza Shah (1925)

Given Name(s) Single word: Kivan :Compound Amir Hussein , Alireza

Surnames were required by the Shah

Surname(s) Single word: Muhammadi, Ahsani, Muzhgan

With affixes: Bahramzadah, Kiyanfar

Compound: Darya-Bandari


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Presentation Overview

Name Format in Farsi

Pre-Shah Period

Post-Shah Period

Farsi Linguistic Specifications

Phonological Rules

Morphological Rules Orthographic Variations

Cross-Lingual Borrowings

Application of These Linguistic Specifications Transliteration & Matching Experiment: to align Farsi names and

their Arabic transliteration


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Farsi Phonological Rules

One letter -> one sound Many letters -> one sound


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Farsi Vowels System

Long vowels:

//, /u/, /i/

Short vowels:

//, /o/, /e/

Diphthongs:

/ei/, /i/, /i/, /ow/

No one-to-one mapping between

Persian short and long-vowels and

Arabic diacritics or Persian letters

example:

(digit 2) (friend)

Do Doost

/o/ /u/ Showvan/ow/

Ajay/i/Haidar/i/

Oveissi/ei/

Ilham/Zhale//e/

Oveissi/o/

Afshar/Yahya///

Issa/Pari//i/

Oraee/Mousa//u/

Arezou/Shadi///

Translit.Example (s)IPA


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Farsi Morphological Rules

Prefixes:

Por: (full)

examples: Por Helm , Por-Azaram Suffixes:

Zad: (birth)

examples: Shahmirzadi: , Farzad: Zadeh: (descendent/son)

examples: Hassan-Zadeh: Wikipedia:Princess Noor Pahlavi

Prefixes/Suffixes: (meaning is the same)

Nezhad: (descent, race)

examples: Ahmedinezhad: , Ethnology: Translation


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Farsi Morphological Rules (Cont.)

Pour: (old-Farsi: son of)

examples: Pour-Azar (metaphor: title of Ibrahim)Richard Danielpour (Jewish composer)

These prefixes/suffixes can attach to ordinary Farsi words

e.g. Poursadef => Pearl (son of oyster)


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Orthographic Variations

Prefixes and Suffixes can occur:

Attached:

Separated with a Zero Width Non-Joiner ZWNJ(U+200C):

Separated with a Space: Hamza Variants: (mostly with Arabic borrowings)

Alef: vs. as in vs. Vav: vs. as in vs. Yeh: vs. as in vs.

Yeh-Vav: vs. as in vs.

Are these variants limited to Farsi names?

No

Leonardo vs. vs. (Iran-News)


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Cross-Lingual Borrowings

Arabic Borrowings:

with the letters () are mostly borrowed from Arabic end with in Arabic -> end in in Persian (AR: -> FA: )

end in in Persian (AR: -> FA: )

end in in Persian (AR: -> FA: )

Non-Arabic Borrowings:

Aslan (Azerbaijani-Turkish: lion)

Arashmid (Greek: Archimedes)

Showan/ShwAn (Kurdish: shepherd)


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Goal: to align Farsi names and their Arabic transliteration

Data:

Collected in Feb. 2007

Source: Islamic Data Bank (IDB)

Farsi personal names Farsi Transliteration of Arabic Names

Arabic personal names

Arabic Transliteration of Farsi Names

Experiment

Matching

Apply the Farsi Names

Linguistic Specifications

Input Data


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Phonological, Orthographic & Cross-Lingual Specifications

Cross-Ling.Hedayatallah Muhamed

PhonologicalHadoui Tehrani, Mehdi

OrthographicYezdi, Mulla Abdullah

PhonologicalAbyar, Narges

Cross-Ling.Zouilm, Ali

Cross-Ling.Vaziri Fahimeh

OrthographicWafai, Davood

OrthographicYacob, Emil Badi'OrthographicYassini, Akram

TechniqueLatin Translit. (FA)Arabic Translit.Persian Name


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Combination of Linguistic Specifications

MorphologicalOrthographic

Phonological

Yassipur, Gholamreza

MorphologicalOrthographicPhonological

Yezdinezhad, Zahra

PhonologicalMorphological

Hashemi Bajgani, jafar

PhonologicalOrthographic

Herlihi, Jon Ahmed

TechniqueLatin Translit. (FA)Arabic Translit.Persian Name


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Experiment Findings

Raw text was not clean:

Farsi: usage of wrong Unicode characters (Yeh vs. Farsi Yeh)

=> Farsi text normalization was required

Data contained translated names rather than transliterated

Able to align 60% of the input Persian namesWhy? =>because we aligned names based on Persian names specification

To get 100% alignment => A need to apply Arabic names specifications

to align Arabic transliterated names in Persian


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Summary

The format of Persian names nowadays is different from the format

used 90 years ago

Persian names have complex linguistic structure that can be sub-

categorized and used in Natural Language Processing applications


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References

Persian Grammar Sketch:

http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/fieldtools/pdf/PersianGrammarSketch.pdf

Persian Names:http://www.hellomahdi.com/farsi/Persian_Names

http://www.netencyclo.com/en/Persian_names

Bruno Pouliquen, Ralf Steinberger, Camelia Ignat, Irina Temnikova, Anna Widiger,

Wajdi Zaghouani & Jan ika (2005). Multilingual person name recognition andtransliteration. Journal CORELA - Cognition, Reprsentation, Language.Langage. Numros spciaux, Le traitement lexicographique des noms propres.

K.M Sharma. What's in a name? Law, religion, and Islamic names. - From the HighBeam Research Archive. Denver Journal of International Law and Policy.

US. BGN. Foreign Names Committee Geographic Names Standardization Policy: Iran.Retrieved on April 14th 2007

http://earth-info.nima.mil/gns/html/Iran_version_2_31.pdf


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Thank You!

[email protected]

Questions ?

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