Persian or Arabian Gulf? A brief history

Middle East Eye

08-05-2025

Not content with trying to rename one body of water, Donald Trump may be planning to rename another.
Fresh from unilaterally changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the US president has now turned his attention to a naming dispute in the Middle East: the Persian Gulf or Arabian Gulf?
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he would make a decision during an upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE on how the US would refer to the sea going forward.
It followed reports citing US officials that Washington was set to begin using Gulf of Arabia or Arabian Gulf, rather than Persian Gulf.
Trump would not the first to insert the word Arabia into the name: every country in the Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - uses the term Arabian.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
But the internationally recognised name, used by the International Hydrographic Organization, the global body for marine navigation, and the United Nations, is the Persian Gulf.
The debate around the name has been a source of geopolitical tension between Iran and its neighbours across the Gulf for more than six decades.
Middle East Eye takes a look at the history of the naming dispute.
'Persian Gulf' used for more than 2,500 years
The body of water between Iran and the Arabian peninsula that connects the Gulf of Oman and the Shatt al Arab river delta has been known by a number of names throughout history.
The oldest and most frequently recurring name is the Persian Gulf - or some iteration of it.
In April 2006, the UN's group of experts on geographical names met to discuss the validity of the term Persian Gulf, producing an eight page document.
It found that during the Achaemenid Persian empire, between 559 and 330 BCE, the name Pars Sea was widely used in written texts, denoting Persian influence over the area.
In that period, both the names Persian and Arabian Gulf appear in texts. However, the latter referred to an area that roughly equated to the Red Sea.
The world maps of the Greek historians and geographers Hecataeus (472 to 509 BCE) and Herodotus (425-484 BCE) both referred to the Red Sea as the Arabian Gulf.
Several Greek and Roman geographers thereafter, including Ptolemy in the second century, referred to the Persian Gulf or Persian Sea.
While no Greek manuscripts of Ptolemy's atlas Cosmographia survive, reconstructions of his maps from the 13th century onwards consistently refer to Sinus Persicus (Persian Gulf in Greek).
A 1467 reconstruction of Ptolemy's Map VI from "Cosmographia" shows Sinus Persicus (Persian Gulf) and Sinus Arabicus (Red Sea) (Wikimedia)
After the spread of Islam in the seventh century, many Arabic speaking communities moved from the coasts of the Red Sea to the areas around the Iranian plateau.
As they moved into the Persian world, Arab geographers continued to refer to the Persian Gulf.
UN experts analysed more than 30 books by Muslim geographers, scholars and scientists, all of which refer to the Persian Gulf or Sea. They include the works of Ibn Khordadbeh, Estakhri, al-Tabari, Mohammad Ibn Omar and dozens of others.
During the Islamic Golden age, scholars such as al-Masudi and Ibn Khaldun referred in Arabic to Khalij Fars (Persian Gulf), while Estakhri and al-Muqaddasi used Bahr Fars (Persian Sea).
'Britain Sea' fails to catch on
In the 16th century, Portugal briefly captured Hormuz island in the Persian Gulf.
Around that time, Portuguese maps and letters show references to Mare de Persia, Persico Sinus, mar Persiano, Persischer Golf and other iterations referencing Persia.
The UN's working group found that in a total of 6,000 historical maps dating up to 1890, just a handful refer to the body of water as the Basra Gulf, Qatif Gulf or Arabic Gulf. The first two names refer respectively to the major Iraqi city and the eastern province in modern-day Saudi Arabia.
The experts wrote: 'It is obvious that the promotional use by the Arabs of the three aforementioned maps, whose identity and originality are not clear, in comparison with 6,000 maps and more than 200 historical and tourism books from Irastus to Herodotus to Estakhri and Ibn Houghal, who have all called the water body Persian Gulf, shall lack any value.'
In the 18th and 19th centuries, when Britain expanded its global influence and dominance around the Indian Ocean, it also referred widely to the Persian Sea.
The UN experts found at least 16 official British maps from the period that used the term.
Britain tried to seize control over the body of water in the late 1830s. Consequently, in 1840, London's Times Journal referred to the Gulf as 'Britain Sea' - a name that never caught on.
A rare map from 1626 refers to the Persian Gulf as the "Sea of Qatif" (Wikimedia)
Following the Iranian nationalisation of the British-owned Anglo-Persian oil company in 1950, relations between Iran and the UK rapidly declined.
It was in that context that British sources began to rename the Gulf.
Charles Belgrave, a UK official with a focus on the Persian Gulf area, published a book in 1955 that first referenced the 'Arabian Gulf'.
In the 1960s, Iran and Egypt fell out over the Iranian Shah's support of Israel, while pan-Arab and Arab nationalist sentiments spread through large parts of the region.
Amid that backdrop, the name Arabian Gulf was increasingly catching on in Arab circles.
Following the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 and the increasing divergence between Iran and its neighbours across the Gulf, tension over the name intensified.
Iran seeks to ban use of 'Arabian Gulf'
Since the turn of the millenium, Iran has strongly fought back against any efforts to use alternative names.
In 2004, National Geographic provoked an Iranian backlash after printing the word 'Arabian Gulf' in parentheses under Persian Gulf. The magazine and its journalists were subsequently banned by Tehran.
Two years later, the Economist was banned from the country after it simply used 'the Gulf', leaving out the word Persian. 'The Gulf' has become a common term used by many media outlets since.
A dangerous mind: The legacy of Bijan Jazani and Iran's 1975 Evin executions Read More »
The fallout has gone both ways: in 2010, the Islamic Solidarity Games, run by Saudi Arabia but due to have been held in Iran, were called off because logos and medals were to bear the name 'Persian Gulf'.
That same year, Iran warned that any foreign airlines that failed to use the term Persian Gulf would not be allowed to use Iranian airspace.
It followed an incident during which a Greek flight attendant was deported from Iran after a dispute broke out with passengers over his use of Arabian Gulf.
In 2012, Google Maps decided to avoid naming the body of water altogether - leaving the name blank. Iran threatened to sue Google over the move. As of today, Google Maps uses both Persian and Arabian Gulf.
To emphasise the importance of the matter, Iran has established Persian National Gulf Day, which occurs on 29 or 30 April each year and involves ceremonies centred around the coastal cities.
That date was chosen as it marks the anniversary of when Abbas the Great, the fifth Safavid shah, drove the Portuguese out of the Strait of Hormuz in 1622.