The politics of naming public spaces in Tehran.pdf

Culture, Health & Sexuality An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care ISSN: 1369-1058 (Print) 1464-5351 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tchs20 The politics of naming public spaces in Tehran Toloo Riazi To cite this article: Toloo Riazi (2019): The politics of naming public spaces in Tehran, Culture, Health & Sexuality To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2018.1543801 Published online: 22 Jan 2019. Submit your article to this journal View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tchs20 CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2018.1543801 The politics of naming public spaces in Tehran Toloo Riazi Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY A study of the politics of naming public spaces in Tehran reveals a masculinist discourse lying behind the process. The majority of streets, plazas, universities and even parks have non-feminine names, and a considerable number of streets with feminine names were renamed after the Islamic Revolution. The analytical lens of this study focuses on the ideological stratification the government displays via the intentional naming of public spaces with official responses seemingly trying to determine the appropriate place for women. The streets are believed to be dominated by men. The way in which Iran names public spaces intensifies such an ideology. This paper aims to broaden the literature on toponymy by pursuing a relatively new path that considers the structure of power embedded in place-naming in Tehran. Received 26 November 2017 Accepted 31 October 2018 KEYWORDS Public space; naming; ideology; gender stratification; Iran Introduction Cura, the goddess of care, was passing by a river when she picked up some mud to make a human being. She asked Jupiter to give humans the spirit of life. Cura’s request was granted, but it marked the beginning of a fight over names. Jupiter wanted to name human being after himself, while Cura wanted to reserve this same right for herself. In the middle of the fight, Terra claimed human beings should be named after her, since she provided the first material for their bodies. Finally, Saturn named the creature homo, since it is made up of humus or earth. This fight over names and naming continues until today. The recent engagement between toponomy and gender studies has highlighted a number of issues of relevance to sociologists, feminists as well as other scholars (Forrest 2018). In 2014, the author went back to Iran to visit her family for the first time in three years. Although Tehran has undergone considerable change in recent years, it was then that she realised she did not know many of the streets or plazas by name, in spite of the fact that she had personal memories of many of those same streets. Many of the names had been changed, as Tehran has undergone major topographical change, with many new highways, tunnels and bridges being constructed. In 2017, after a more recent trip, the author decided to subject the public names of her city, Tehran, to closer scrutiny, since the onomastic makeup of the city can reveal CONTACT Toloo Riazi triazi@umail.ucsb.edu ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 T. RIAZI different layers of social reality behind the new hyper-masculine names that had been given to public places and the tendency to change the older names. Veiling and gender segregation have long been noticeable in Iranian architecture. For instance, ‘[the] windows in houses must be above 170 cm from the ground to prevent passers-by from looking in’ (Fatehrad 2017, 146). Names, by the same token, have become of huge interest in contemporary Iran. The names of newborn babies must be in line with the rules of the National Organization for Civil Registration and must meet specific criteria in order to be approved. It was with this focus in mind that it was decided to pay more attention €le 2006, 35) of public space in Iran and its naming. to the ‘authoritarian nature’ (Go In particular, it was felt important to see whether these new names reveal a consistent ideological orientation. An important highway that used to be known as Niayesh (a feminine name that also means ”prayer“) has recently been renamed Ayatollah Hashemi-e-Rafsnjani (the late president, the former house speaker, the commander in chief during Iran-Iraq War, and one of the most influential revolutionary figures in Iran). Tehran’s streets, buildings and parks are increasingly being named after masculine figures, and these names deliver an ideological message through this gender identification. A brief survey of the names of the principal streets and plazas reveals that the majority are named after a man, dead or alive, religious or non-religious. Abuzar, Imam Hassan, Imam Hossain, Imam Khomeini and Hazrat-e-Abdol-Azim (all of these are the names of the non-Iranian, masculine and religious figures, except Imam Khomeini) are among the busiest plazas in Tehran, and the names of masculine religious figures, such as martyrs and imams, continue to be of tremendous importance. Their names are governed by a hierarchical system that ranks them in terms of their religiosity, with the most religious ones at the top and less religious or more ancient Iranian ones at the bottom. Ostad Nedjatolahi, Motahari, Shariati, Taleghani, Saadi, Mir-Damad, Naser-Khosrow, Takhti and Sheykh-Bahai (these too are the names of Iranian masculine figures) are commonly visited places in Tehran. Only one university in the city, Al-Zahra (Zahra is the most commonly used title of Prophet Mohammad’s daughter, Fatima), bears a feminine name, and it exclusively accepts women. The other women’s university, Shariati Technical College, is named after Ali Shariati, a famous male ideologue of the Islamic Revolution. These masculine names generate as many questions as answers. Does the country lack important women to name places after, for example? Or, following Goffman, is it the case that identity makers imprint themselves on the linguistic landscape of society? (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006, 10). No football stadiums in Tehran have a feminine name, since women are legally barred from watching matches in stadiums. The politics applied by the state have created spaces in which women are controlled, with space serving ‘as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to be a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power’ (Lefebvre 1991, 289). The morality police of Tehran constantly monitor women’s behaviour and dress. Segregated schools, public transport and sport stadiums, for instance, provide places in which citizens are placed according to a hierarchical social order. Place-naming is one of the tools the state has at its disposal to regulate society. The aforementioned names may not provide significant insight into the country and its politics by themselves. But this piece of information – combined with survey data – may shed more light on the patriarchal nature of life as it is lived. CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY 3 Women in Iran Some scholars believe that the seeds of today’s patriarchal values were present in prerevolutionary Iran. The Civil Code of 1936 institutionalised men’s rights of custody and divorce and ‘prohibited women from traveling or entering into education and employment without their husband’s permission’ (Yeganeh 1993, 5). Via such mechanisms, the so-called Civil Code extended old patriarchal rights into a new domain, providing clerics with greater authority over the family in general and women in particular. The ‘categorization of all men as soldiers’, the reform of the female dress code and the growth of ‘military dress code for men’ (Moallem 2005, 72) intensified already-existing notions of masculinity promoted by Reza Shah. It is important, however, to draw a distinction between institutionalised patriarchy (one that is enforced or even created by the state) and familial patriarchy, which is much older than the former. This contrast is what Moallem calls ‘patriarchs vis-a-vis the nation’ versus ‘patriarchs vis-a-vis private families’ (2005, 66), but both exhibit determinate effects. Traditionally, a woman is not called by her first name in public space in Iranian society. Instead, she is called by her husband’s name or by the first son’s name. Dehkhoda’s Charand-O-Parand provides a good example of this example, in his satirical image of Iranian society: Everybody knows that among us, calling a woman by her own name is wrong. Not just a little wrong, but egregiously wrong. Actually, what’s the point of a man calling her wife by her name? Until she has children, he says, Hey! And when she has children, he uses the child’s name to call her, as for example: Abul! Fati! Abu! Rogi! and so on. The wife answers, Uh-huh! Then the man says his piece, and that’s it. Otherwise, to call a wife by name is plain wrong. (Dehkhoda 2016, 263) Such behaviour is still a common tradition in some families. Could this be why naming a street or building after a woman is so unusual? Although patriarchy is not something new in the country, the Islamic Revolution ‘reinvented and expanded certain retrogressive gender and cultural practices’ (Afary 2009, 265). After the revolution of 1979, Iranian people experienced a radical shift at multiple levels. The clerics put a particular stamp on the outcome of the Iranian Revolution: it was to be an Islamic Revolution leading to the first modern Shi’ite government. Women became the ultimate embodiment of the ideal set forth by the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the values of the regime. In the aftermath of the revolution, the religious agenda was transformed into something broader in the form of a yardstick used to judge and police people’s lives. ‘The convergence of religious and political authority’ meant that ‘the whole political process’ was ‘gendered’ (Torab 2006, 11). Strict control of the media, forbidding conversations between men and women in public, and schools segregated by sex were among the most radical outcomes of the revolution. Sexual segregation was designed to polarise space and time. The new regime launched a gendered society, tearing women and men apart and ensuring women spent more time with women (Mir-Hosseini 1999, xvii). These restrictions galvanised Iranian women into action. They learned to navigate the rough waters of their new lifestyle by opposing the compulsory hijab, using makeup and reclaiming ‘public space’ (Esfandiari 1997, 6); only women needed to cover themselves in front of men. All of these restrictions seem to be insurmountable obstacles. However, the relationship between the government and women in modern 4 T. RIAZI Iran can be contradictory and surprising. As Esfandiari (1997) states, buses in the country are segregated but ‘in taxis [ … ] men and women – perfect strangers – sit sandwiched together’ (48). Today’s universities also provide a place in which young women and men can spend time with each other. Despite this, in Iran space is a crucial element shaping the female’s body repertoire. ‘Iran’ designates not only the geographical location of the body’s residence, but also how this body exists in reference to other bodies. Hence, the Iranian female body learns that it has more agency in private space, where women have the autonomy to choose their desired outfits. In contrast, in public space, the female body becomes a product of the political system. As Sciolino (2000) among others has observed, Iran behind the curtains, can be surprisingly different. The majority of contemporary Iranian women do not sit back submissively. They make remarkable efforts to assert autonomy over their bodies and over their lives. In modern Iran, gender inequality is challenged in different ways. Shavarini (2006) states that ‘in 2003, of those passing university entrance examinations, 62 per cent were women and 38 per cent were men’ (189). Rising divorce rates, increasing numbers of unmarried women, increasing age of marriage and increasing premarital relationships testify to a society in transformation. Campaigns, such as My Stealthy Freedom and White Wednesdays or Wednesday without Compulsion aim to suspend the assumed hierarchical distances between individuals, disturb limitations and challenge the use of public space in private ways. By and large, the Islamist state grants privilege to patriarchal values, but occasionally a more modern project is adopted (Afary 2009). Even the masculine names of public spaces are far from absolute, and female names occasionally make their appearance. However, many of these female names are the names of the flowers or religious figures. The post-revolutionary government is therefore using names as powerful vehicles by which to inject its official narrative into people’s everyday lives. The exclusion of women from the symbolic language of the city is in line with the masculinisation of the streets. Background to the study The symbolic role names play in shaping identity has been the subject of numerous studies. In Gujarat, India, the masculine names of public spaces have been shown to influence the cultural and social expectations of citizens (Patel 2017, 1012). In Israel, Cohen and Kliot (1992) have shown how the politics of place-naming is intimately tied to Zionist ideologies associated with the reappropriaton of occupied Palestine. Around the world and in the USA, respectively, Stewart (1975) and Stump (1988) have discussed how honouring heroes by naming streets and places after them can become part of the national iconography. However, to date, place-naming in Iran has not received scholarly attention, especially in relation to gender politics and the masculinist ideologies that underpin it. Against this background, this study aims to examine place-naming in the Municipality of Tehran. Methodology As of 20 October 2018, Greater Tehran is divided into 22 municipal districts, which together comprise 355 neighbourhoods according to the official city web site, My CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY 5 Figure 1. Map of 22 municipal districts in metropolitan area of Tehran. Tehran (Figure 1). The centre of Tehran constitutes the downtown area and is the heart of the economy and business. While the north of the city is home to the most expensive villas and western style shopping malls, and the west of the city is home to an emerging middle class, the southern and eastern parts of the city are more economically and socially disadvantaged. The residents of north Tehran are generally considered wealthier and more secular, whereas the southern and eastern people are seen as more religious and traditional in their outlook. The accepted norms and traditions in each of these geographically and socially diverse neighbourhoods are reflected in the politics of naming. Sample selection To conduct this study, data were taken from the official webpages of the municipal government of Tehran (Tehran.ir and Mytehran.ir) as of 20 October 2018. Because the author faced difficulties in obtaining a complete list of public spaces, a stratified sample was drawn, informed by both geographic and demographic characteristics. Sample selection was stratified using a two-step sampling method. At the first level of stratification, all 22 districts and the 355 neighbourhoods were divided into five subgroups based on their location in the east, north, west, south and centre of the city, and two to four random selections were made of districts based on population, area and number of neighbourhoods in each subgroup (Table 1). At a second level of stratification, one neighbourhood from each previously selected district was randomly chosen from a sorted list in alphanumerical order obtained from the My Tehran web site database. To inform this study, two neighbourhoods in the north, three neighbourhoods in the south, two neighbourhoods in the west, three neighbourhoods in the east and four neighbourhoods in the centre of Tehran were 6 T. RIAZI Table 1. Geographically distributions of municipal districts and neighbourhoods in Greater Tehran. East MD 8 13 14 15 North NN † 13 13 21 21 P ‡ 425 253 489 659 Total 68 1,827 3 Weight| MD ¼ municipal district. † NN¼number of neighbourhoods. ‡ P (103)¼population. § A¼area (km2).pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi | Weight  NN= ðP:AÞ § A MD 2.1% 1 2.1% 3 2.2% 4 4.2% 10.6% West South Centre NN P A MD NN P A MD NN P A MD NN 27 12 20 494 330 917 5.4% 4.5% 11.0% 2 5 9 21 22 20.9% 7.5% 9.1% 2.9% 7.4% 16.5% 43.5% 9 14 18 15 20 76 268 278 419 256 368 1,588 4 2.5% 1.3% 5.8% 1.7% 3.1% 14.3% 6 7 10 11 12 1,741 2 693 857 174 186 175 2,085 2 16 17 18 19 20 59 21 29 9 13 12 84 14 14 10 17 13 68 P A 251 3.2% 312 2.4% 327 1.2% 308 1.8% 241 2.0% 1,439 10.7% 4 CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY 7 Table 2. Information concerning selected neighbourhoods in Tehran. Neighbourhood Farmanieh (Rosatm abad) Pasdaran Fatemi Bahar South Karoon Enghelab-Felestin Haft-Hoz Javadeieh South Afsarieh Shahrak Be’sat Sadeghieh South Khani Abad Javanmard-e-ghassab North Shahran North Chitgar Total District 1 3 6 7 10 11 8 14 15 16 18 19 20 5 21 Location North North Centre Centre Centre Centre East East East South South South South West West Total no. of place names Highways/ freeways Streets/boulevards/ roundabouts Alleys/dead ends 109 125 186 152 232 180 182 120 50 58 31 63 194 91 73 1846 2 3 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 3 2 2 18 52 89 40 16 8 25 72 102 33 18 3 30 77 23 10 598 55 33 144 136 224 155 109 18 17 40 27 31 114 66 61 1230 Figure 2. Comparison of feminine, masculine and neutral names in three categories of selected neighbourhoods in Tehran. randomly selected following the aforementioned sampling procedure. Table 2 details the 15 neighbourhoods studied. Each selected neighbourhood consists of several subareas and the distribution of feminine, masculine and neutral names in public spaces of those 15 neighbourhoods was then assessed. The names of all highways, streets, dead ends, boulevards and roundabouts were examined with respect to their masculine, feminine or neutral connotations. For places with recent name changes, the date of their renaming was identified. Findings Figure 2 shows the gender distribution of names based on location. As can be seen, no highway in the selected neighbourhoods bears a feminine name. The highways, 8 T. RIAZI as the main veins of the city, are primarily named after men – be they national figures or foreigners. The number of feminine and neutral names increases gradually when it comes to naming more local places and roads such as small alleys and dead ends. It also appears that feminine names appear more often on the margins of the city than in its centre. These numbers reveal something about the prevailing gender politics in Tehran. But quantification, by itself, does not explain the naming. Such a decontextualised approach fails to recognise the politically contested masculine politics of places, spaces and their names (Buss 2015). It is the historical background of strategies of place-naming and gender roles that connects the two. Play on names in Iran’s streets Iran has always been called Iran by its people. However, the country was given a new life and meaning when, in 1935, to draw attention to the Aryan identity of its people, Reza Shah asked the rest of the world also to call it Iran and not Persia. This naming reflected a powerful strand of thinking in the run up to World War II, and Reza Shah used the name to create and sustain a new cultural as well as political order (Giraut and Houssay-Holzschuch 2016). Later, in 1979, the country was officially renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran, a name that has become a vehicle for displaying the country’s ideological orientation. The shifting sands of naming in Iran therefore involve the consolidation and intensification of particular values. Indeed, the construction of the new Islamic country sought not only to foreground religion but also to close the book on the past regime. Changing the names of public spaces strengthened the value framework of the new system. Many places that had had feminine names until 1979 were renamed. Under the politics of the new regime, Jaleh (a woman’s name) plaza became Shohada (martyrs) plaza; Mahnaz (a woman’s name) was changed to Saboonchi (a common family name); Farzane (a woman’s name) was changed to Bagher-khan (an Iranian constitutional revolutionary figure); Shahrzad (also a woman’s name) was changed to Shahid Hadj Mohammad Yazdi (the name of a male martyr); and so the list goes on. Such a practice affirms Kertzer’s suggestion that the institutionalisation of a radical political shift often requires people to ‘give up long-established habits and previously held conceptions of their world’ (1988, 153). Between 1979 and 1987 in Tehran, no fewer than 302 avenues, 41 squares and 17 parks were renamed (Chelkowski and Dabashi 2000, 121). The purpose of this renaming was to remove memories of the previous regime, and in turn these new names became a means of self-narration and a means of self-presentation to the rest of the world. Appendix 1, which details some of the renamed public spaces between 2013 and 2017 in Tehran, demonstrates this point further. Naming in Iran has always been a political instrument. For instance, there is a yearly tradition relevant to the role and power of names in which the Supreme Leader bestows a name on each new year. Starting in 1999, the Supreme Leader named each year based on the socio-political situation of the country. Each year’s name therefore is the symbolic representation of the government’s politics, goals and strategies. The economic hardship of 2016 and 2017 led to the naming of those years ‘Economy of Resistance: Practical Steps and Action’, and ‘Economy of Resistance: Production and CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY 9 Employment’, respectively. A key political message is delivered in the name: namely, that although times are tough, people need to resist. Outside Iran, the politics of naming and renaming has shaped not only culture but also the political economy of different regimes. For example, under the impact of the French Revolution, Place Louis XV in Paris became Place de la Revolution in 1793, and then later became Place de la Concorde (Azaryahu 1997, 481). Moreover, the hyper-masculine nature of public space is not exclusive to Iran. Of a documented 5,575 public sculptures portraying historical figures in the USA, only 559 are women (Peled 2017). In Iran, the dominant ideology usually determines the political strategy of the country, and public naming is central to achieving political goals. The execution of Shia Sheikh, Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia in 2016 intensified the conflict between Shia and Sunni believers. Although Tehran City Council decided to name a street after Sheikh Nimr in Tehran, protesters took the initiative and put up a fake sign, changing the name of the thoroughfare in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy to Martyr Ayatollah Nimr Baqir al-Nimr. The name Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, in this context, is ‘directing people to what is historically important’ (Alderman 2008) – that is to say, the ongoing conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It was a similar strategy that made the government change the names of Winston Churchill Avenue near the British embassy in Tehran, to Bobby Sand. In the same way, a street was named honouring Imad Mughniyah, the senior commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah who was killed by CIA or Mossad. When a street in Tehran was named after Khalid Islambouli (the person who assassinated Anwar Sadat, the former president of Egypt), it became clear that Iran was trying to sever its relationship with Egypt. Very occasionally, the neighbourhoods and streets that were renamed after the Islamic Revolution sometimes lose the battle to their older designations, when residents continue to call them by their old names. A modern and wealthy neighbourhood called Shahrak-e-Gharb (literally Western neighbourhood) was renamed Shahrake-Qods (Qods [Jerusalem] Town) after the revolution to commemorate Jerusalem. But the older term continues to be used in conversation, and the new name – Shahrakeneh Qods – only appears in official news and documents. The prerevolution’s Toopkha (Artillery Barracks) square was renamed as Imam Khomeini Square after Imam Khomeini, but the term Toop Khaneh remains used on a daily basis. It might be said that these changes are merely an argument over words, but what lies behind the changes is more than a simple name-game. A name can be mired in the slough of ideological symbols that lie behind it. It is this paper’s argument that the name of a location, as a conveyor of knowledge, becomes the condensation of a type of male politics that endorses the agenda of the state. Public spaces or political battlefields The emergence of limitations placed on women in a country named the Islamic Republic of Iran was and still is commensurate with the rise of the Islamic government. The ‘protective’ shell of the hijab aims to shield women from men’s gaze in public spaces. However, as part of an ongoing struggle, women employ a variety of techniques to broaden the aspects of their body that can be seen. The state seeks to ensure the conformity of women to its own values. By doing so, it seeks to shape its 10 T. RIAZI imagined community, and names are useful instruments in achieving this goal. As a result, the female body becomes an interstitial space between the public and private realms. If access to power over the private space is harnessed, official power can seize the in-between space of the female body. The segregation–separation strategy adopted during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013) brought back many distinctions between men and women. The plan was developed in response to the increasing number of women working outside the home or attending universities. In accordance with the new law, women were not allowed to study in certain fields at university, and some universities were required to accept more male students than female ones. A critical analysis reveals the ideology behind restricting women’s access to some areas of study at university. Educated women who work outside the home and earn money by themselves would likely not be as submissive as those who depend on their husbands, according to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of the country. Thus, newly educated women become an emasculating threat to the traditional distribution of power within family. Segregation–separation was intended to curb the power of women and destroy a so-called unwanted identity. The number of frequently used masculine names in public spaces reveals much about the power that has been employed to block the presence of women outside the home. A masculinist discourse is central to naming the spaces that are ideologically determined to be masculine. As succinctly stated by Azaryahu and Golan (2001, 181), place names connote a certain ideology about both the use of the names and the nature of those places. The names of public spaces, as an extension of the same narrative, turn out to be more often masculine, but this is not the whole story. The distinction between men and women continues even in physical spaces, and the name carves up the space, both physically and figuratively. Space has therefore restricted women’s movement instead of widening it. The link between space and gender stratification has given birth to completely divided spaces in the form of gendered physical space. The most pertinent illustration of this can be found in school. Sex segregated schooling, as in Iran, draws a very visible and strong line between girls and boys, influencing the assumptions children make about themselves and their lifestyles. As a result, such spaces ‘display or “do” gender’ (Thorne 2005, 319). Interestingly, the naming of girls’ schools provides further evidence of influence of dominant ideology. Names with religious connotations are commonly used in the titles of girls’ schools. They include Tahereh (pure and clean), Narjes (the name of the twelfth Iman’s mother), Al-Zahra, Maktab-Ol-Zeynab (Zeynab is the name of Prophet Mohammad’s granddaughter), Maktab-Ol-Zeynab (the school of Zeynab), Soodeh (the name of one of the Prophet Mohammad’s wives), Hoora (heavenly woman/angel and the nickname of Fatima) and Bent-Ol-Hoda (a well-known Muslim Arab figure). School names thereby function as cultural battlefields in which to position and debate identities (Alderman 2002). Normative separation between the sexes can also be found in buses and other forms of transport. Women usually are only allowed to use the rear of the bus, behind men. The space designated for them is named vidjeh-e-banovan (i.e. ‘for women’). But this is not just a matter of physical space but also the ideology fuelling its division. The phrase ‘for women’ ‘hierarchize[s] and semantically order[s] the surface of the city’ CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY 11 (De Certeau 1984, 104). It brings into line all the citizens, male and female, by determining the political, sexual and hierarchical makeup of everyday space, giving order to the vast universe of shapeless and endless possibilities that might otherwise exist. Physical separation in Iran goes hand in hand with the naming of public spaces. According to legislation approved in December 1996 by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution concerning the naming of public space in Tehran, 10 important issues should be considered in this regard. The first of these makes it clear that the public spaces should ideally be named with due respect to religious figures in the history of Islam, the Islamic Revolution of Iran, and the pantheon of martyrs. Given that the majority of these martyrs and figures are men, a masculine discourse turns out to be the hidden language of public spaces. This is why the majority of Tehran’s highways are named after important martyrs in the Iran–Iraq War. As mentioned in the aforementioned legislation, names related to Iranian art and nature have a lower priority. Currently, a subcommittee of the Tehran City Council, the Naming Commission (a commission on naming and renaming streets and public places in Tehran), is in charge of naming Tehran’s public spaces and acts in accordance with the legislation. Further evidence of these naming practices can be found in the naming of the cities’ parks. At first sight, it might be assumed that the majority of parks will be named after flowers, which are typically used as women’s names as well. For example, in Persian, the tulip is called Lale, which is a very common girls’ name. In contrast, a quick analysis of trends in parks’ names, suggests that these are generally neutral or masculine. Names such as Ab va Atash (water and fire) and Poonak (a generic name) are considered as neutral names in this regard. The majority of new parks have political-masculine names. Velayat (refers to government by Islamic clergy), Nahjolbalaghe (title of the collection of sermons and letters of Ali, the first Shia Imam), Misagh (literally meaning ‘promise’, metaphorically referring to an unwritten contract between the Supreme Leader and the people), Aemeh Athar (referring to the Twelve Shia Imams) and Javanmrdan (chivalrous men, which refers to the ancient Persian Sufis) provide just a few examples in this respect. Concluding remarks Naming has been identified as the first step in taking possession (Robinson cited in Yeoh 1996, 299). After the name first takes possession of plazas and streets, they can then impose their authority through that name. The name moreover reveals the political stance of the namer. In the case of Tehran, ‘naming as norming’ (Berg and Kearns 1996, 99) thereby connotes the patriarchal values of the namer. The masculine names accorded to the majority of public spaces reveal the opinion of the namer towards women and their appropriate place in society. The politics of naming in Iran provides the alert observer with a tremendous opportunity to see ideology as it materialised in everyday life. Forays into parks, universities and street names yield important results. The names given to public spaces normalise both masculine domination, and the boundaries of the feminine body. For power to speak socially, it ‘must speak with space’ (Constantin cited in Myers 2009, 95). Space 12 T. RIAZI thereby operates as the bridge between power and the people, with the intertext of cultural symbols connecting the two (Entrikin 1991). In modern-day Iran, names turn out to provide a fundamental intersection between people and political discourse. The power-making or boundary-making aspects of public space naming in Tehran have a masculinist tendency that aims to impose a hegemonic discourse. 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Old name Type District New name Category Ratified on 18 July 2017 Danesh 29th Yekom (1st) E Niloufar Bastami [Unnamed] [Unnamed] 30.6 Mozaffari 19th Parsa Alley Alley Street Street Alley Street Street Street Alley Street Boulevard 4 15 5 5 7 7 13 13 17 21 22 Seyyed Esmaeil Heydar Hosseini Mahdi Esmaeilpour Abbas Gandomkar Seyyed Abbas Safavi Mouzeh Shoadaye Naja Ahmad and Mahmoud Ghannad Jamshid Mohajerani Esfandiar Parvaneh Nejat Reza Sefidbar Major General Karamreza Mokri Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Neutral Neutral Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Ratified on 20 June 2017 Ghaheraman Masoudi Khatibi [Unnamed] Ashrafi Esfahani 2nd [Unnamed] Mahour Alley Alley Alley Roundabout Street Street Street 13 13 13 15 15 18 19 Ali Taghizad Amir Arzhangi Alireza and Gholamreza Khatibi Ghadir Sarlak Abolghazi Mansour Jabbari Mehr Sajjad Zebarjadi Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Ratified on 6 June 2017 [Unnamed] E Goelstan 2nd 15 2nd E 14th 27th 35th Ansar 1st Sima 6th ansar 7th [Unnamed] [Unnamed] [Unnamed] [Unnamed] [Unnamed] Underpass Street Street Street Alley Alley Alley Alley Alley Street Bridge – – – Boulevard 2 2 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 18 22 22 22 22 Major General Akbar Nikravesh Fard Mohammad Taemeh Nader Taghazaei Javad Jahangard Abolfazl Niknezhad Mahmoud Mahdian Shahab Hosseinkhani Mahmoud Khodayari Akbar Moghaddam Asghar Fallah Pisheh Majid Ghorbankhani Hirmand Hamoun Haraz Hossein and Ghorbanali Vafaei Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Neutral Neutral Neutral Masculine Ratified on 8 December 2015 136 Alley 134 Alley Taheri Dead end Barzi Alley Reza Fard Alley Ordibehesht Alley Vahdat Alley Farbat Street Bahman 6th Alley [Unnamed] Alley 8 8 12 12 14 14 14 18 20 21 Hamidreza Zareh Mohammad Mehdi Sharifi Sohrab Khosravi Majid Karimi Ahmadabadi Kazemi Dinan Morteza Shokouhi Toraghi Morteza Moghaddasi Amirhossein Fardi Morteza Farajzadeh Abbas Karimi Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Ratified on 30 December 2014 Yek (1) Alley Sirous Alley Arman Dead end Rashidi Dead end Massih Alley Bazarcheh Alley Sadeghzadeh Alley 42 Alley Omidi Alley Mohammadi Alley Payam Street 3 3 3 3 3 3 11 15 15 15 15 Behrouz Khedmati Hossein Mirza Taraj Saeid Jafari Mohammad Pour Abbas Reza Abbasi Mohammad Mehdi Mohsenian Hassan Masoumi Habib Abdollahi Mohammadreza Mohammadi Tehrani Abbas Saeidifaar Mojtaba Taheri Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine (continued) CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY 15 Appendix 1. Continued. Old name 10 Tir Masjed-e-Sajjad Avval (1st) Type Alley Alley Alley Alley District 15 15 17 18 New name Mohamamdali Tavakkoli Amirhossein Faraji Ali Saedi Ezzatollah Zanjilabadi Category Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Rectified on 8 October 2013 Abtab Alley Yasaman Street W 16th Alley E and W 32th Street E 6th Dead end Sarvestan 5th Alley East 5th Alley 13th Alley Akbarian Alley Edrisi Dead end Entekhabieh Alley Mehraban Dead end Heydari Alley Zanbagh Alley Parviz Alley Abouzar Alley W 7th Alley Poust Alley Bahar Dead end Saeid Alley Homayouni Alley 4th Dead end Azimi Alley Arab Alley 7th Dead end [Unnamed] Street 2 2 2 2 4 4 4 8 10 12 12 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 15 15 15 15 17 17 Mohammadreza Haddadi Ali Yousefpour Masoud Kourosh Ahmad Nafisi Mohammadreza Dehghani Ebrahim Ghassemi Iraj Effati Ghorban Bidkhori Baradaran-e-Bagheri Mohammadhassan Ebrahimi Alireza mirzaei Mojtaba Gholamzadeh Seyyed Ahmad Hashemi Abbas Heydari Mojtaba Mirzaei Akbar Torabi Mojtaba Gholikhani Shahboddin Zolghadr Shojaei Hojjatollah Abedi Hossein Pour Ali Mohammadi Hossein Golgilas Moharram Yousefi Javad Asadollahi Mohammad Jandaghi Mohsen Khalili Ali Hosseinnezhad Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Ratified on 27 August 2013 [Unnamed] Dead end Eftekhari Alley Abbasi Alley Maryam Alley Kourosh Alley Dariush Alley Bagh-e-Ilchi Alley Bidi Alley 6.25 Street Afrouz Street E 5th Alley [Unnamed] Bridge Motallebi Alley Abbasi 1st Roundabout Alfa Alley Chaman Alley Hosseynieh 7th Alley 3 3 3 3 3 12 12 12 13 13 13 15 15 16 16 16 17 Yasin Tahereh Abbasi Hadi Abbasi Nasser Habibirad Mehrdad Taheri Ababs Pour Ahmad Omid Ghassem Abedinzadeh Nour Morad Zeinivand Ali Kamrani Yadollah Espandi Morteza Charkhkar Hossein Jamshidi Mohsen Ilkhanizadeh Moharram Tork Ezzatollah Habibzadeh Abdolreza Hosseinpour Hashem Behzadipour Neutral Feminine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Ratified on 2 July 2013 E and W 19th W 152 Shahiloo 10 Metri 1st Eslami Tavakkoli Lavassani Rahmani Setareh [Unnamed] [Unnamed] 4 8 8 8 8 9 12 12 16 19 19 Seyyed Ghassem Hosseini Hamid Nikkhah Davoud Ghassemi Abdolazim (Davoud) Habibi Fereydoun Zamani Hossein Gozalkhoo Abdolreza Nemat Davoud Kashani Ali Rezaei Adl Khalije Fars (Persian Gulf) Bohloul Mahmoudi Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Neutral Masculine Street Alley Alley Alley Alley Street Alley Alley Street Roundabout Roundabout (continued) 16 T. RIAZI Appendix 1. Continued. Old name Type Ratified on 15 January 2013 Golzar Street Khorshid Alley Meraj Alley 109 Street Karami Ghoumi Alley Jafarzadeh Alley Avval (1st) Dead end Taraghi Alley Alaei Alley District 1 8 8 8 8 10 11 12 12 New name Seyyed Mohammad Mesbah Mohammad Yousefi Majid Ebrahimi Ahmad Alipour Majid Rezazadeh Mahdi Pour Ahmadi Shamseh Mohammad Tavakkoli Mohammad Goudarzi Category Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Masculine Neutral Masculine Masculine