http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Languages/persian_not_farsi.htm
Think of Persian as a 'brand'. To the rest of the world it is associated with images of beauty, culture, science, art and a distinctive, deep-rooted and rich heritage. "Farsi" on the other hand, is meaningless to most people outside Iran, except perhaps that it is the language spoken in the almost equally remote and seemingly rootless "Iran". How much would you have to pay Nike to change its brand name? Nike is less than 50 years old and its brand is worth 24 billion dollars. Persia is over 3000 years old (as a brand, although it has been around for much longer) but many of its citizens appear to value it less than Nike (which Iranians flock to acquire more than they try to understand the value of the treasures they are sitting on). Every time you call your language "Farsi" outside of Iran, you are devaluing your heritage because you are dissociating it from its rich history. Discuss!
This is a good discussion and I am for it, by the time it is limited to the language (Persian versus Farsi) and not Persian versus Iranian. Once I was the editor of a magazine and there was one article on "Persian culture" and I had so many telephone calls from Azari people that "Persian" was wrong, and you had to mention: "Iranian culture". They argued that by using "Persian culture" or "Persian carpet", we were trying to label or create a "brand" that was not true, and it was "Iranian" rather than Persian, trying to convince me that "Persian" referred definitely to the dominant ethnic group in Iran and there was always the possibility that a Baluch or an Azari might protest the label "Persian". I used the same argument as above, however, they mentioned that when you talked about the language, that was correct; but you could not say Persian culture or even Persian music.
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