Iran

Usage Note: As foreign locales become more familiar to English speakers, the pronunciation of their names often evolves away from a literal rendering of their English spelling and toward their native pronunciation, though with considerable variation across names and speakers. Prague once rhymed with plague but now is closer to bog, while Chile may be pronounced either as "chilly" or "chee-lay," and Brazil is still Anglicized (brə-zĭl′) rather than Portuguese (brä-sēl′). In American English today, we find three common pronunciations for Iran: (ĭ-rän′, ĭ-răn′, and ī-răn′), with analogous variants for Iraq. In our 2014 Usage Ballot, most Panelists personally preferred (ĭ-rän′), but a large majority considered both (ĭ-rän′) and (ĭ-răn′) acceptable. The same was true for Iraq. Panelists were much less tolerant of the pronunciation of the initial syllable as "eye" (some commented that this pronunciation seemed "unsophisticated" or "parochial"): 71% deemed (ī-răn′) unacceptable, with only 6% reporting it as their preferred pronunciation, with similar percentages for Iraq.