Persian Gulf naming dispute

The Persian Gulf naming dispute is concerned with the name of the body of water known historically and internationally as the Persian Gulf, after the land of Persia (Iran). The name has been disputed by some Arab countries since the 1960s in a dispute with origins in the Muslim conquest of Persia and the emergence of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism, resulting in the terms Arabian Gulf (Arabic: الخليج العربي‎‎) (used in some Arab countries), the Gulf, and other alternatives.

On almost all maps printed before 1960, and in most modern international treaties, documents and maps, this body of water is known by the name "Persian Gulf". This reflects traditional usage since the Greek geographers Strabo and Ptolemy, and the geopolitical realities of the time with a powerful Persian Empire comprising the whole northern coastline and a scattering of local emirates on the Arabian coast. It was referred to as the Persian Gulf by the Arabic Christian writer Agapius, writing in the 10th century.

According to Mahan Abedin of The Jamestown Foundation, the first proposal to change the name to the "Arabian" Gulf goes back to the 1930s by Sir Charles Belgrave, then the British adviser to the ruler of Bahrain. Arab countries used the term "Persian Gulf" until the 1960s, but with the rise of Arab nationalism during that decade, some Arab countries, including the ones bordering the Persian Gulf, adopted widespread use of the term الخليج العربي (al-Khalīj al-ʻArabī; Arab Gulf or Arabian Gulf) to refer to this waterway. A senior presenter for Al Jazeera English said "ironically, among the major drivers of the movement for change were Arab perceptions that Iran, driven by Washington, had supported Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973". This, coupled with the decreasing influence of Iran on the political and economic priorities of the English-speaking Western World, led to increasing acceptance, both in regional politics and the mostly petroleum-related business, of the new alternative naming convention "Arabian Gulf" in Arab countries.

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