Persian Words in English: 38 Words You Already Know, and Their Stories

Many everyday English words come from Persian: paradise, bazaar, caravan, pajamas, khaki, checkmate, jasmine, lemon and spinach are a few. Khaki, for example, comes from Persian خاک (khâk), “soil, dust.” Most of these words did not travel straight from Iran to England; they passed through Greek, Arabic, Turkish, French or Hindi-Urdu on the way.

Below you will find each word with its Persian source written in Persian script, how to pronounce it, what it means in Persian today, and the route it took into English. Only etymologies that dictionaries agree on are included, and a short section at the end covers popular claims that are uncertain or wrong.

How Persian words reached English

Persian has been a language of empire, trade and poetry for more than two thousand years, so its words spread far beyond Iran. English picked them up along five main routes:

• Greek and Latin. The oldest borrowings, from the time of the ancient Persian Empire. Words like paradise, magic and satrap came this way.
• Arabic. After the 7th century, Arabic borrowed many Persian words for plants, foods, colors and science. Europe then took them from Arabic, often through Spain, Italy or France: orange, lemon, jasmine, azure, spinach.
• Ottoman Turkish. Turkish absorbed a great deal of Persian, and European travelers and traders brought words back from the Ottoman world: kiosk, divan, turban, tulip, jackal.
• Hindi-Urdu (British India). Persian was a court and administrative language in India for centuries. The British met Persian words there and took them home: pajamas, khaki, shawl, cummerbund, seersucker.
• Directly from Persian. Travelers and scholars borrowed a smaller number of words straight from Persian, such as shah and dervish.

Because of these detours, the English word often looks quite different from the Persian one. Knowing the route explains why tulip and turban are related, and why van is a Persian word in disguise.

English words from Persian: the full table

The Persian column shows the source word in modern Persian spelling where one exists. If you are still learning the script, our guide to the 32 letters of the Persian alphabet will help you read them.

Two notes on the table. Musk is spelled مشک (moshk) in Persian. And in the case of satrap and lilac, the source word is not used in everyday modern Persian, so only the transliteration is given.

The stories behind the best-known words

Paradise: from a walled garden to heaven

The ancient Persian word behind paradise meant a walled enclosure, the kind of royal park Persian kings were known for. Greek writers borrowed it as paradeisos for those parks, Greek translations of the Bible used it for the Garden of Eden, and from there it came to mean heaven. Modern Persian has its own descendant, پردیس (pardis) Listen, used for a park, a campus, or paradise in poetry. The everyday Persian word for garden is باغ (bâgh) Listen.

Pajamas: “leg garment”

Pajamas combines Persian پا (pâ), “leg, foot,” and جامه (jâme), “garment.” In India the word described loose trousers, and the British brought both the clothing and the name to England. The story has a fun ending: modern Persian took the word back from European languages, and Iranians today call pajamas پیژامه (pizhâme) Listen.

Khaki: the color of dust

خاک (khâk) Listen means soil or dust, and خاکی (khâki) means dusty or earth-colored. British soldiers in India dyed their uniforms this color, and the word followed the uniforms. In spoken Persian, خاکی also describes a person who is humble and down to earth, a nice compliment. For more color words, see our list of colors in Persian.

Checkmate, chess and the rook

Chess came to Europe from the Persian and Arab world, and so did its vocabulary. شاه (shâh) Listen means king. Checkmate goes back to the Persian phrase شاه مات (shâh mât), “the king is helpless” or “stunned”; it passed through Arabic and Old French. English check and chess grew out of the same word for king. The rook is from رخ (rokh), the name of that piece in Persian chess. Iranian players today say کیش و مات (kish-o mât) Listen for checkmate.

Bazaar, caravan and van

بازار (bâzâr) Listen is still the everyday Persian word for a market; the old covered markets of Iranian cities, like the Tehran Bazaar, are called by this name. کاروان (kârvân) Listen is a group of travelers moving together, and a کاروانسرا (kârvânsarâ) is the inn where they stopped for the night (English caravanserai). English later shortened caravan to van, so every delivery van carries a little Persian with it.

Orange, lemon, sugar and candy

Many fruit and food words came west through Arabic. Orange goes back to نارنج (nâranj), the bitter orange, a word Persian itself had taken from Sanskrit. Lemon comes from لیمو (limu) Listen. Candy is from قند (ghand), the lump sugar Iranians still put on the saucer next to their tea, and sugar traveled from Sanskrit through Persian شکر (shekar) and Arabic. Here is a twist: the sweet orange in modern Persian is پرتقال (porteghâl) Listen, named after Portugal. You can find more fruit names in our fruits and vegetables list.

Tulip and turban: one word, two meanings

You might expect tulip to come from the Persian word for tulip, لاله (lâle) Listen. It does not. Both tulip and turban come from Persian دلبند (dolband), a wound head cloth, which Turkish passed to Europe. Europeans thought the flower looked like a turban, and the name stuck. Persian flower names are lovely in their own right; see our flower names in Persian.

Jasmine, julep and lilac

Jasmine is from یاسمن (yâsaman), and the name Yasmin is the same word. A mint julep started life as گلاب (golâb) Listen, rose water: گل (gol) “flower, rose” plus آب (âb) “water.” Lilac comes from a Persian word for a bluish flower, related to نیل (nil), indigo.

Algorithm: a Persian scholar’s name

The word algorithm comes from the name of the 9th-century mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, whose family name points to Khwarazm, a region of Central Asia. He wrote in Arabic, the language of science in his time, and Latin translations of his work turned his name into algorismus. In Persian he is called خوارزمی (khârazmi).

Borrowed words vs. cognates

There is a second, older link between the two languages. Persian and English both belong to the Indo-European family, so some words look alike because they share an ancestor thousands of years old, not because one language borrowed from the other. These are called cognates. If you want the bigger picture of where Persian sits among languages, read our overview of the Farsi language.

Listen Listen Listen A good way to remember family words is to learn them as a set; our list of family members in Persian has the rest.

Popular claims that are uncertain or wrong

Lists of “English words from Persian” online often include words whose history is less clear. Here is what is safe to say about the most common ones.

• Sherbet. Persian has شربت (sharbat), a sweet drink, and English got the word through Turkish. But the word itself is Arabic in origin, so Persian was a stop on the way rather than the source.
• Peach. The word is about Persia rather than from Persian: Latin called the fruit the “Persian apple.” The Persian word for peach is هلو (holu).
• Tiger. English got it from Greek and Latin. A link to an old Iranian word is often suggested, but it is not certain.
• Kebab. The word exists in Persian (کباب, kabâb), Turkish, Arabic and Urdu, and dictionaries do not agree on which language it started in.
• Scarlet. Some dictionaries connect it to a Persian cloth name, others are cautious. Treat it as possible, not proven.

How these words help you learn Persian

Loanwords are a free head start. When you meet بازار, شال, پسته or شاه in a Persian text, you already know what they mean, and reading them is good practice for the script. Start with the words you already half know and build from there with our most common Persian words. If you enjoy word stories, you will also like 11 beautiful Persian words and these interesting facts about the Persian language.

Want to keep building vocabulary from here? Test yourself with our Persian vocabulary quiz, or learn the next layer of everyday words with Top 1,500 Persian Words.

Common questions

What English words come from Persian?

Common ones include paradise, bazaar, caravan, van, pajamas, khaki, shawl, kiosk, divan, turban, tulip, checkmate, chess, orange, lemon, spinach, pistachio, candy, jasmine, lilac, azure, julep, seersucker, cummerbund, sitar, dervish and shah.

Is “paradise” a Persian word?

Yes. It goes back to an ancient Persian word for a walled garden or park. Greek borrowed it as paradeisos, and it reached English through Latin and French. Modern Persian still uses its descendant, پردیس (pardis).

Is “checkmate” from Persian?

Yes. It comes from Persian شاه مات (shâh mât), “the king is helpless,” which passed through Arabic and Old French. In Iran today, chess players say کیش و مات (kish-o mât).

Did “pajamas” come from Persian or Hindi?

Both, in a way. The word is Persian, پا “leg” plus جامه “garment,” but English borrowed it from Hindi-Urdu in British India, where Persian words were widely used.

How many English words come from Persian?

There is no single agreed number. Short lists like this one cover the everyday words, while scholarly dictionaries include many rare, technical and historical terms that most English speakers never use.

Are Persian and English related?

Yes. Both are Indo-European languages, which is why words like مادر (mâdar) “mother” and برادر (barâdar) “brother” look familiar. These cognates are separate from the later loanwords listed above. For how Persian relates to its neighbors, see Farsi vs Persian vs Dari vs Tajik.

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