One of the topics we addressed in the American Heritage Dictionary’s 2014 Usage Ballot concerned the pronunciations of Iran and Iraq. There are three common pronunciations for Iran in American English (roughly “ih-RAHN,” “ih-RANN,” and “eye-RANN”), with analogous variants for Iraq (“ih-RAHK,” “ih-RACK,” and “eye-RACK”). The ballot results were rather uninteresting as far as the distinction between “ih-RAHN” and “ih-RANN” was concerned: 93% of the Panelists deemed the “ih-RAHN” pronunciation acceptable, while 82% accepted the “ih-RANN” pronunciation. Panelists who personally preferred “ih-RAHN” outnumbered those preferring “ih-RANN” by more than four to one, but the great majority of the Panel considered both pronunciations legitimate. The results for “ih-RAHK” and “ih-RACK” were similar: a strong majority of Panelists reported personally preferring “ih-RAHK,” but there was widespread acceptance for both “ih-RAHK” (94%) and “ih-RACK” (82%).

With regard to the “eye-RANN” and “eye-RACK” pronunciations, however, the Panel was much less tolerant. Some 71% of the Panelists deemed “eye-RANN” unacceptable, with only 6% reporting it as their preferred pronunciation; likewise, 74% of the Panelists nixed “eye-RACK,” and only 3% personally preferred it. Among the reasons given by those Panelists who disapprove of “eye-RANN” were that it has “hawkish connotations” and sounds “angrier,” “xenophobic,” “ignorant,” and “not … cosmopolitan.” Reading these comments, we wondered whether there might be a regional difference at play. Looking at how many Panelists from each region consider “eye-RANN” acceptable, as compared with those who consider it unacceptable, a clear pattern emerges: though there was no region of the country where “eye-RANN” was actually the preferred pronunciation, Panelists hailing from the part of the US from western New England to the Dakotas and roughly north of I-80 were evenly split between acceptance and rejection of “eye-RANN,” while Panelists from outside that region disapproved of the pronunciation by a margin of almost four to one.

It appears, then, that though some people perceive the “eye-” pronunciations of Iran and Iraq as jingoistic, the disapproval is much stronger in some parts of the United States than others; in the interior northern states they are well established variants that enjoy a moderate degree of acceptance.

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