The Persian people (Persian: پارسیان) are an Iranian ethnic group native to Iran who are native speakers of the modern Persian language, closely related Iranian dialects and languages, and adhere to cultural systems connected with other ethnic Persians. The term Persian translates to "from Persis" which is a region north of the Persian Gulf located in Pars, Iran. It was from this region that Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid empire, united all other Iranian empires (such as the Medes), and expanded the Persian cultural and social influences by incorporating the Babylonian empire, and the Lydian empire. Although not the first Iranian empire, the Achaemenid empire is the first Persian empire well recognized by Greek and Persian historians for its massive cultural, military and social influences going as far as Athens, Macedonia, Egypt, and Libya. Persians have generally been a pan-national group often comprising regional people who often refer to themselves as "Persians" and have also often used the term "Iranian" (in the ethnic-cultural sense). Some scholars, mechanically identifying the speakers of Persian as a distinct ethnic unit (the ‘Persians’), exclude those Iranians who speak dialects of Persian. However, this approach can be misleading, as historically all ethnic groups in Iran were collectively referred to as Iranians or Persians until 1935, when Rezā Shāh formally required foreign countries to call Persia by its native name, Iran.

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