Thanks for the nice work for the celebration of the Persian New Year.

Just to let you know, the spelling of .Norooz. gives a negative impression because of the .No. at the beginning in the English text. However, the similar spelling such as .Now. will eliminate that impression and somehow will be closer to the actual purpose and meaning of this old tradition.

In the USA, many respected figures in the field of language such as Dr. Yarshater at Columbia University have suggested to use .Nowruz. as the proper spelling. Please help to spread the word and crate unity among all fellow who celebrate .Nowruz..

Thanks for your cooperation.

Ali Afshar
New York

I agree with your explanation of NO in the NoRooz but there is no NOW sound in NOROOZ.
I have also feedback that its not NoRooz but rather NoRuz = Ruz like Ruth, the sound.

If we are spelling it for our Iranian Audience, they now how NoRuz sounds like.
It we are spelling it for non-Iranian English speaking/reading audience then I suggest there is no "NOW", "NAW", "NEW", "NU", ... in NoRuz.

A few years ago I took a few hours and compiled all various spelling of NoRuz online and I picked the most popular ones.

Here are some of the various spelling I have received over the years with rather good explanations but I have decided I am not going to worry about how it is spelled bur rather how it is celebrated - I leave the discussion of whether its Persian or Farsi and when to use Farsi, ...

NoRuz
NoRooz
NowRooz
NowRuz
NowRouz
NawRuz
NawRooz
NawRouz
NewRuz
NewRouz
NewRooz

So, I am going to spend my available time to ensure the Persian new year concept and Spirit is promoted and the tradition is celebrated and not to worry too much about the spelling of it and leave that work to the scholars who can't come to an agreement on whether we are Iranians who speak Farsi or Persian who speak Iranian or Persian Speaking Persians who speak Farsi at home but speak Persian outside of home, ...

Have a Wonderful and Blessed Persian Iranian Farsi Speaking people New year. - Amir

PS1. During March of 2005, over 200,000 users were directed to FarsiNet by search engines based on the following actual spelling by visitors;
norooz = 32%
noruz=27%
nowruz= 18%
noroz=12%
norouz=5%
nowrooz=4%
novrooz=2%

FarsiNet has adapted the top three most popular spellings.

PS2. In the past 7 years since I set up the NoRuz Webpages and after over 500,000 visitors, no one has ever asked what is the correct spelling of NoRuz, but I have had many questions about why majority of Iranians celebrate year of 1300 something when Iran and its new year tradition has been around for over 2500 years. Most of non-iranian visitors' questions is regarding the date issue and not spelling issue.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to start yet another task force debating 1384 vs. 2564vs. 3680 vs. 7318, I think our scholars have their hands full debating "Farsi vs. persian", "Persian vs. Iranian", "Dorood vs. Salaam", "Persian Gulf vs. Arabian Gulf", "NoRuz vs. NowRuz vs. NawRooz vs. NoRouz, ...", ...

FarsiNet Team