Places, Names, and Place Identity: a Case Study of Tehran

The name of place plays a clear role in giving identity to the place and people living in it. Giving meaning to the area is determined by various mechanisms one of which is name-giving. Changing the border between names into a border between places; is in fact the first step to the establishment of place identity, which plays an important role in giving identity to life and social interactions. This paper makes a study of Tehran in as far as name-giving and the name of places and their implications are concerned during the periods before and after the Islamic Revolution, and seeks to deal with the main and salient points of this topic. Using a fair description, categorized technics and descriptive statistics, this paper has listed the names of Tehran’s districts and parishes which are nearly 500 and examined them. The results show that the names which are derived from human names indicating leadership sanctity, heroes, ruler and governor and names consisting of the word ‘’Abad’’, which shows the rural nature of these places are very common. Among the findings of this research are the policy of the dominant power in the name-giving of places in every period and the necessity of the attention which the management and civil planning give to biological-skeletal dualism according to the rapid changes of development in urban areas in recent years.