Persian City Name Generator

Historically the great Persian cities were Persepolis and Pasargadae (Achaemenid capitals), Susa, Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), Ctesiphon (Sasanian capital near Baghdad), Rey, Nishapur, Merv, Balkh and Herat in Khorasan, and Isfahan, the Safavid capital. Today the largest Iranian cities are Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Karaj, Qom and Ahvaz.

Abad means 'cultivated, inhabited, made prosperous'. It is usually attached to the name of a founder, ruler or saint, or to a pleasant quality: Khorramabad is 'verdant place', Firuzabad 'victorious place', Mehrabad 'place of the sun'. The suffix spread with Persian culture, which is why it appears from Islamabad and Hyderabad to Ashgabat.

Combine one evocative root with one place suffix: Golnar + abad, Shir + kand, Setareh + dezh. Or build an ezafe phrase from a place word and a descriptor: Bandar-e Mahtab (port of moonlight), Qal'eh-ye Bahram, Darreh-ye Gol. Two or three syllables before the suffix, stress on the last syllable, and no consonant clusters at the start will keep it sounding Persian rather than Arabic or Turkish.

Both. Persian is the language and the historical culture, which stretched well beyond modern Iran into Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iraq, so the list includes Herat, Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand alongside Iranian cities. The invented names use Persian vocabulary and grammar and will suit any Persianate setting, real or fictional.