Quote:
Originally Posted by Barnes
Is that why people from there refer to themselves as Persians? You're not fooling anyone!
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Only Iranians who are Persian refer to themselves as Persian. Persians are the largest sub-group of the larger Iranian cultural group (which also includes; Pashtuns, Tajiks, Kurds and Ossetians - among others). A common misunderstanding among Westerners is that Persian is the same as Iranian, and while all Persians are Iranian, not all Iranians are Persian (but most are).
Of course, it is a political statment as well. It is not unlike how some people in the Balkans refer to themselves as "Yugoslavs" instead of Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Macedonian, etc..