Folio § shirin
Şîrîn
Şîrîn — sweet, lovely (literally ‘milk-sweet’)
The classical heroine of love in Persian–Kurdish literature
The story of the name
Şîrîn — the word comes from milk, mother's milk, and settles as sweet, gentle, without bitterness. As a name, through Nizami's Khusraw o Şîrîn (c. 1180), Şîrîn became the figure of great love in the Persian–Kurdish literary world. From the first taste of milk to the everyday word for love — one name, several layers of sweetness.
Etymology
Root: šīr · Middle Persian
Şîrîn — written شیرین in Persian and Sorani — derives from Middle Persian šīrēn: a relational adjective formed on šīr ‘milk’ (compare Avestan xšwid-). The original sense is ‘milk-like, milky’ → ‘sweet’ → ‘pleasant, gentle’. The name is best known from Nizami Ganjavi's Khusraw o Šīrīn (c. 1180), one of the great love-romances of the wider Persian literary world, which the Kurdish tradition shares.
Idioms
- zimanê şîrîn ‘a sweet tongue’ — said of someone whose words give comfort
Name family
- Şîranî · derived — ‘sweetness, kindness’ as a given name
Linguistic parallels
- Shirin (شیرین) Persiska — Same word, same name
- xšwid- Avestiska — Old Iranian root for ‘milk’
Updated: 2026-05-02