An Etymological Study of Persian Words in Italian

The study of the penetration and expansion of Persian loanwords in different languages including European languages has resulted, especially in the recent decades, in presenting some works which are indicative of the topic's importance and attractiveness. Reviewing the works reveal that finding Persian words in English, German, French, Swedish, Albanian and Spanish have been documented in some national and international studies, but the lack of such a study regarding Italian as an important European language seems obvious. While the number of Italian words in Persian is limited, the findings of the present study indicate that the number of Persian loanwords in Italian is around fifty. In this paper, twenty Persian words in Italian are introduced, described and analyzed. In addition to introducing the words in the donor and recipient languages, based on the authentic references and dictionaries, the transfer route, intermediary languages and semantic and phonological changes are dealt with.