What Rodmena means

In everyday Persian, rūd (رود) is a river. Classical Persian gives the word more senses: the string of a lute, a song, and a child. Steingass’s Persian-English dictionary lists “a son or daughter; a comely and amiable youth”, and the Persian dictionaries of Dehkhoda, Moein and Amid define it as a child, son or daughter.^[1][2]

The same word names Rudāba (رودابه), princess of Kabul in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the Persian epic completed around 1010. She married Zāl and became the mother of Rostam, the epic’s greatest hero. Her name is read as rūd, “child”, and āb, “radiance”: the shining child.^[4]

Set side by side, the two words read as one image: a cherished child under the azure heaven. That is the literal meaning of Rodmena.

As a given name, Rudmina (رودمینا) appears in Iranian lists of girls’ names with the meaning “princess”, shāhzādeh. The lists are a popular naming tradition and cite no dictionary, so we give that meaning as the tradition gives it. Its echo in literature is Rudāba, the shining child who was a princess of Kabul.^[4]

The Greeks called the Iranians Persai. Herodotus tells how they came by the name: Perseus married Andromeda, their son was Perses, and “it was from this Perses that the Persians took their name”. He also records that the Persians called themselves Artaei.^[5]

The story is a Greek legend. The name comes from Pārsa, the Old Persian name of the people of Cyrus the Great and of their homeland in the south-west, today’s province of Fārs.^[6]

Iranians have always called their country Iran (ایران), from the Middle Persian Ērān, built on the ancient name Iranians used for themselves. In 1935 the government asked foreign governments to use “Iran” in official correspondence, and in 1959 it confirmed that both names may be used.^[6]

Across this site we say Iran and Iranian for the country and its people, the names they use for themselves, and Persian for the language, Fārsi, and its literature.