Azizan

Azizam, joonam, golam: what Persian parents call their children

Persian parents call their children things like azizam (my dear), joonam (my soul, my life), golam (my flower), nafasam (my breath) and noor-e cheshmam (light of my eyes), and they add warm phrases such as ghorboonet beram, literally "may I be your sacrifice", which in everyday use simply means "I adore you". Most of these words are a noun plus the ending -am, which means "my". Below are about twenty of the endearments genuinely used with children, each with its Persian script, how to say it, what it means word for word, and when people use it, followed by a short note on why these words matter for a child growing up outside Iran. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated Persian children's stories page by page. This page is a free guide for parents raising Persian-speaking children abroad, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

The little word that does the work: -am, "my"

Almost every word on this page is built the same way: a noun, then the ending -am, which means "my". Aziz is "dear" or "precious", so azizam is "my dear". Gol is "flower", so golam is "my flower". Jân, said joon in everyday Tehran Persian, is "soul" or "life", so joonam is "my soul, my life". When the noun already ends in a vowel the ending becomes -yam in speech, as in zendegim or zendegiyam ("my life").

You can also say the same thing in two words, with -e man ("of me"): gol-e man, mâh-e man, nafas-e man. It sounds a touch more deliberate, the way "my darling" can sound fuller than "darling". And the plural of aziz is azizân, "dear ones", which is where this site takes its name.

Twenty-one endearments Persian families use with children

The stresses above are a guide for English speakers; in real speech many of these run together quickly, and families from different regions say them a little differently. All of them work for boys and for girls.

"May I be your sacrifice": the phrases that sound strange in English

A handful of the warmest Persian endearments say, word for word, something that sounds alarming in English: ghorboonet beram ("may I go as your sacrifice"), fadât sham ("may I be given up for you"), dowret begardam ("may I circle around you"), dardet be joonam ("may your pain come to my life"). No Persian speaker hears them literally, any more than an English speaker hears "I could eat you up" as a threat. They are the language of a grandmother who has just been handed a baby.

The dictionaries describe them exactly that way. Dehkhoda defines ghorbun-sadagheh raftan, the verb for showering someone in these phrases, as saying "may I be your sacrifice" and "may I be your offering" to them again and again; the Abadis dictionary gives the example of a mother who hugs her child and pours them out. Dowr-e kasi gashtan, "to circle around someone", is glossed as the same thing. Encyclopaedia Iranica's entry on taarof, the Iranian etiquette of courtesy, notes that everyday Persian is full of such phrases that put the speaker low and the listener high. With a child, there is no etiquette left in them, only the feeling: you matter more to me than I do.

If your partner or friends ask, the plainest translation of all four is "I love you so much". If a child asks what ghorboonet beram means, "it means I love you more than anything" is the honest answer for their age.

Why these words matter for a child growing up abroad

Words of feeling seem to settle into the language a person learned them in. In a lab study by Catherine Harris and colleagues, Turkish-English bilinguals showed stronger bodily reactions (measured by skin conductance) to the scoldings of childhood in their first language than in English, and childhood reprimands showed the biggest gap of anything tested. Writing about this line of research, Anna Hatzidaki and Mikel Santesteban describe emotion as built into the language we hear early, and list endearments, reprimands and tone of voice among the things learned first. These studies measure adults, not small children, so they say more about the parent than the child: the Persian words you heard as a child are likely to be the ones that still feel most like love when you say them.

Parents seem to know this without being told. In Aneta Pavlenko's questionnaire study of bilingual parents, many described emotional talk in their first language as natural and in their second language as artificial, and a 2023 study of transnational families by Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen and Janina Iwaniec found that six Chinese and Polish families in the UK gave the heritage language priority when expressing feelings. They also noticed that a language's own endearment can carry more than "I love you": it can carry care and worry at once, which is true of joonam and ghorboonet beram too.

For a child abroad, that makes these small words worth keeping in daily use even when the rest of the conversation slides into English. They are short, said many times a day, tied to being held and comforted, and impossible to mistranslate in tone. Hearing them from more than one person helps: on Azizan, for example, a grandmother who records a story page by page might stop on a picture and say azizam, nafasam to the camera, and her grandchild hears those words in her voice every time the story plays. For the names of the people who say them, see Persian words for grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Using them at home

1. Start with three. Azizam, joonam and golam cover most of a day and are safe with any child.
2. Answer with jaanam. When your child calls "Maman" or "Baba", answering jaanam? instead of "yes?" is one of the easiest pieces of Persian to slip into family life.
3. Keep the sacrifice phrases for real moments. Ghorboonet beram after a hug or a kind act, dardet be joonam when they fall over: the meaning is learned from the moment, not from a translation.
4. Let relatives use their own. Every family has its favourites, and a grandmother's fandogh or an uncle's joojeh becomes part of how a child knows who is talking. For more everyday Persian at home, see family words in Persian for kids and Persian bedtime phrases.

Related guides

• Persian words for grandparents, aunts and uncles
• Family words in Persian for kids
• Persian bedtime phrases for kids

Questions

What does azizam mean?

Azizam (عزیزم) means "my dear" or "my precious". It is aziz, "dear", plus the ending -am, "my". It is the most common Persian endearment and works for children, partners, family and friends.

What is the difference between joonam and azizam?

Azizam is "my dear"; joonam (جونم, the everyday form of jaanam) is "my soul" or "my life". Both are used with children all the time. Joonam feels a little more intimate, and jaanam is also the usual way to answer when someone you love calls your name.

Does ghorboonet beram really mean "I will sacrifice myself for you"?

Word for word it means "may I be your sacrifice", but nobody hears it literally. Persian dictionaries describe these phrases as affectionate expressions, the kind a mother pours out while hugging her child. In practice it means "I adore you" or "thank you, sweetheart".

Is it strange to call a child "my liver" in Persian?

Not in Persian. Jigar (liver) has long stood for deep feeling, and jigar-gooshe, "a piece of the liver", is listed in Dehkhoda and Moein as meaning "child". With children people usually say jigar-tala, "golden liver"; jigar on its own can mean "hot" between adults.

Can I use these words with a boy?

Yes. Azizam, joonam, golam, nafasam, noor-e cheshmam, ghorboonet beram and the rest are used for boys and girls alike. Persian has no grammatical gender, and none of these words is reserved for girls.

Open Azizan — record a story for your child

Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

Hear when azizan is ready

azizan works now in your browser. If you like, leave your email and we will tell you when the full app and the app-store version are ready. Giving your email is optional. Privacy

Your email Notify me