"Persians are a remarkable people. The term Persian comes from Westerners using the ancient city of Pars as a shorthand way to refer to people from that part of the world -- the exonym -- whereas those people call themselves by the Farsi term 'Iranian' -- the endonym.
Whatever you call them, the people of Iran are remarkable. British journalist Michael Axworthy argues Iran is basically its own continent, 'more a civilization than a nation', in the same category as India, Russia, the United States."