Mehrdād ( fa, مهرداد, ) is a common

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

male given name in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and other Persian speaking countries. The name is derived from '' Mehr'', an angelic

Zoroastrian Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic on ...

divinity Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine

('' yazata'') of covenant,

light Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 tera ...

, and

oath Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to ...

. The Persian word ''mehr'' (مهر) also means "sun" or "love", while ''dād'' (داد) means "given". So, the literal meaning of Mehrdād (مهرداد) is "given by sun" or "given by love". Mehrdad is a historical Persian name that derives from

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...

''Mihrdāt'' (Old Persian ''Miθradāta''), a

theophoric name A theophoric name (from Greek: , ''theophoros'', literally "bearing or carrying a god") embeds the word equivalent of 'god' or God's name in a person's name, reflecting something about the character of the person so named in relation to that deit ...

meaning 'given by Mehr'. In modern-day Iran, the name Mehrdad is also retroactively applied to several historic Persian figures that appear in western literature as Mithridates, a Hellenized or philhellenic form of Mehrdad.

People

Mehrdad Pahlbod Mehrdad Pahlbod (; 16 March 1917 – 9 August 2018), born as Ezatollah Minbashian ( fa, عزت‌الله مین‌باشیان, links=no), was an Iranian politician who served as the first culture minister of Iran from 1964 until 1978. Biograph ...

(1917–2018), Iranian politician *

Mehrdad Kia Mehrdad Kia is Professor of History and Director of Central and Southwest Asian Studies at the University of Montana. He focusses on the history of the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa and on the civilizational history of Islam. He received ...

, historian

References

* Given names Persian masculine given names {{given-name-stub