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| Letter from the Deputy of Legal and Registration Affairs at the Zanjan Civil Registration Office |
The core of the matter is that Mr. Reza Abbasi wishes to name his daughter Elin. Initially, the Zanjan Civil Registration Office opposed this choice. When Mr. Abbasi forwarded his request to the Legal and Registration Deputy of the National Organization for Civil Registration in Tehran, they also rejected it.
It is worth examining the letter signed by Mr. Rahman Ahmadinejad, the Legal and Registration Deputy of the Zanjan Civil Registration Office.
The letter states:
“Due to the fact that, in Azerbaijani culture, the conventional spelling of the hamza mark follows its Persian usage, and this is noted in most dictionaries, particularly in Mr. Behzadi’s Azerbaijani culture, where it is specified that the use of the hamza (ء) is avoided.”
The first issue here is that what Mr. Rahman is trying to convey is unclear. The sentence is written in Persian but makes no coherent sense.
The second issue is the meaning of "Azerbaijani culture" in this context. Is Mr. Rahman referring to a dictionary of the Azerbaijani Turkish language? If so, does he mean that the written use of the hamza in Turkish is similar to its usage in Persian? If that is the case, it is unclear what Mr. Rahman’s problem is since the hamza is also used in Persian. Words like "dāemi" (permanent) are not written as "dāimi." Does Mr. Rahman write "zā'er" (pilgrim) as "zāir" or "qā'em" (steadfast) as "qāim"?
In another part of Mr. Rahman’s letter, he writes:
“Additionally, due to the inconsistency between written and spoken forms, and the difficulty this creates for listeners of the word, the name was not approved for registration.”
This argument contradicts his previous point. If Mr. Rahman had raised these objections about the Persian language’s spelling, it would have been more justifiable. For instance, comparing the written and spoken forms of names like Afrāsiyāb or Eltefāt would clearly show discrepancies between their initial pronunciation and written form, a problem that does not arise in Azerbaijani Turkish with the addition of a hamza.
Furthermore, the claim that the presence of a hamza creates issues in writing is the most laughable of all. If Mr. Rahman Ahmadinejad is not as truthful as the president who shares his surname, he should at least acknowledge that he himself included the hamza mark (ء) in his writing, proving there is no issue in its usage. Besides, doesn’t the Persian keyboard have a specific key for the hamza next to the letter "و"?
Beyond Mr. Rahman’s contradictory arguments, Mr. Abbasi, Elin’s father, believes the real reason is opposition from the Academy of Persian Language and Literature.
Looking at it from this angle, his argument is understandable. After all, this system regards non-Persians as outsiders and is committed to the physical elimination of their culture and language. In this case, it seems that Mr. Rahman was likely embarrassed to explicitly address this reality and resorted to incoherent explanations.
Original Text in Farsi