In some articles you have referred to the Arabian Gulf. There is no such a thing as the Arabian Gulf! What you meant was probably what is commonly known as the Persian Gulf.

Using the term “Arabian Gulf” is not only wrong, but also a source of confusion.

I also heard a reporter using this term on CBC television, which is a shame.

B. Taati
Burnaby, B.C.

We’ve received at least one other complaint about this noun during the past year. As pointed out in a previous response, there is no consensus on whether Arabian Gulf is wrong.

Just as Iran used to be known as Persia, the narrow arm of the Arabian Sea along its coast has actually had a few names over the centuries, including the Sea of Erythras and Sinus Persicus.

According to the 1999 Cambridge Encyclopedia, this part of the Arabian Sea is now called the Persian Gulf, Arabian Gulf, or sometimes just the Gulf.

Several other western reference books, including the 1998 Canadian Oxford Dictionary, also list Arabian Gulf as a synonym for Persian Gulf.

But many modern atlases and language authorities appear to prefer Persian Gulf, and some historians have argued that Arabian Gulf is both inaccurate and confusing because it's an old name for what's now called the Red Sea.

A number of Iranians passionately insist on Persian Gulf – partly because it goes to the heart of a debate over sovereignty of the waterway, including islands in the region. A few years ago, for example, protesters proposed boycotting Royal Dutch Airlines because one of its maps included the words Arabian Gulf. Within weeks the company agreed to change the name back to Persian Gulf, according to the online magazine Iranian Bulletin.

There are a couple of compelling reasons journalists might favour Persian Gulf: (1) It allows them to remain neutral in a sensitive territorial dispute by sticking with the term that's been around thousands of years; and (2) It makes stories clearer for Canadians unfamiliar with the label Arabian Gulf, who might confuse it with Arabian Sea.

Many media outlets, including the Canadian Press and New York Times, do not list a preference in their style guides.

But some newsrooms have ruled on the question. For instance, The Globe and Mail instructs journalists to write "Persian Gulf, not Gulf of Arabia."

The 2000 Associated Press manual on usage elaborates: Persian Gulf is the “long-established name” and the best choice. “Some Arab nations call it the Arabian Gulf. Use Arabian Gulf only in direct quotations and explain in the text that the body of water is more commonly known as the Persian Gulf.”

CBC News Online editors recently decided to adopt Persian Gulf as well. We continue to use Arabian Sea, of course, to refer to the large body of water along the coast of Oman, India and Pakistan.

February, 2002

Hello

I was just looking through your page on the CBC site and came across the following in an answer to someone's objection to the name 'Arabian Gulf':

Just as Iran used to be known as Persia, the narrow arm of the Arabian Sea along its coast has actually had a few names over the centuries, including the Sea of Erythras and Sinus Persicus.

First things last (and hence last first):

'Sinus Persicus' is nothing but the Latin equivalent of 'Persian Gulf': being a term used in the international scientific language at the time it was probably used, I would find it difficult to accept the claim that it was actually the *English* name at the time!

Secondly, it surprises me to read that 'Sea of Erythras' was once a name for the Persian Gulf. Are you sure this isn't in fact an earlier name for the *Red Sea*? I seem to recall the name 'Erythrean Sea' from some antique map or elsewhere, which is derived as I understand from a Greek word 'eruthros' (red): I believe the country at the south end of said sea, Eritrea, gets its name from an Italianised version of Erythrea.

Regards,

Chris Miller
Department of Linguistics
University of Manitoba

1. Latin? Yes. And Greek, too. At no point did we intend to claim that the English language somehow surfaced in the Arabian Sea way back then. We simply wanted to point out that this body of water used to have different names. The Latin Persicus term was influenced by the ancient Greeks, who embraced and perpetuated the label Persikos for Iran. (Iranians, on the other hand, have always called their country Iran – which means "Land of the Aryans." In 1935, their government formally requested the world start using Iran instead of Persia.)

Where did the Greeks pick up Persikos? Parsa was the name of an Indo-European nomadic people who migrated into a region of southern Iran in about 1000 BC, according to the 2002 Encyclopedia Britannica. The Greeks first encountered them about 500 years later, and during now-famous battles involving figures like Alexander the Great gradually extended the term to cover inhabitants of the entire Iranian Plateau. Ancient texts and maps clearly refer to Sinus Persicus – supporting the claim that the term Persian Gulf has very old roots indeed. Many other languages, including French (Golfe Persique) and Spanish (Golfo Persico), eventually adopted their own version of "Persian Gulf."

2. It surprised us too. But it's a fact, according to numerous reference books. For instance, the 2001 Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, notes that in ancient times Erythraean Sea "applied to the Indian Ocean, later to the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, and finally to the Red Sea." Merriam-Webster's 1998 Geographical Dictionary, Third Edition, makes the same point. It's a little confusing, but the waters can be sailed without too much difficulty – at least until you reach the shores of Eritrea.

Now to the tricky part. Erythros, of course, is an old Greek word for red. The Erythraean Sea was also known as the Mare Rubrum – Latin for "Red Sea." But in ancient times the body of water known today as the Red Sea was called Sinus Arabicus, according to historians. In other words, today's Red Sea was once the "Arabian Gulf," as mentioned in our original Quick Queries response. This is a separate body of water from the Persian Gulf, which Arab countries now call the "Arabian Gulf."

May 2002

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