Kayvan

Kayvan (also spelled Keyvan, Kayvon, Keivan, Keywan, or Kaevon, Persian: کیوان‎‎) is a Persian masculine given name, also occasionally a surname, meaning Saturn.^[1][2] It is related to the word for Saturn in several old languages, including "Kaimanu"^[3] in Sumerian, "Kayamanu"^[4][5] in Akkadian, "Kion"^[6] in Syriac, and "Kewan"^[7] in Pahlavi. That a 16th-century high priest of Estakhr was named Azar Kayvan suggests that "Kayvan" was used as a name for a person in Iran as early as that time, at least among Zoroastrians. "Kayvan" is distinct from the similar Persian word "Kayhan", meaning "universe", also used as a masculine given name. To English speakers, the spelling Kayvon is closest to the Persian pronunciation, [keivɒːn].

"Saturday", the day of Saturn, finds its Classical Persian equivalent in "Keyvansheed".^[8]

In Persian Literature

In the Geocentric model, Saturn was on the highest planetary sphere, the seventh. As a result, in Persian poetry, “Kayvan” usually connotes physical elevation or exalted status. Related to this connotation are compound adjectives of praise such as "Kayvan-manesh" (of lofty nature^[9]), “Kayvan-manzelat” (of lofty position^[1]), or "Kayvan-jenab" (Kayvan's peer^[10]).

The 14th century poet Khajoo Kermani writes to his beloved:

Neither are you one to tend to my tired cries,

Nor am I one to not let them to "Kayvan" rise.^[11]

Three centuries earlier, Sanai is doubtful that just any poet can match his own skills:

Reaching “Kayvan", fancies he, with his arrow?

Mere fancy: mere iron is his bow.^[12]

Rumi writes:

Drop your business: "horse and cargo".

The cup’s the horse, load the wine.

Into the sky then watch go

High as “Kayvan”, your business, divine.^[13]

It is high praise to suggest that Saturn is in one's service. Khajoo writes:

Brahmin of the world of the six doors,^[14] still,

Soaring "Kayvan" is but an agent of our will.^[15]

Saturn's other associations appear less frequently. It is the constable of the heavens. It appears darker than the inner planets. In Roman and Greek mythologies, Saturn and its Greek origin Cronus were at times associated with old age.^[16] In astrology, Saturn is the Greater Malefic, the bringer of bad luck. This last association appears not to affect contemporary Persian-speaking parents' choice of names for their sons.

Khaghani, writing in the 12th century, complains:

By the curses of life, on the seventh sky I landed,

Like “Kayvan”: not one cohort of luck, stranded.^[17]

While referring to Saturn's status, Masud Sa'd Salman contrasts old and young and good and bad luck:

This child, though great as old "Kayvan", as all appraise,

The luck of the young, like a governess, will raise.^[18]

Putting together another combination, Sa'di compliments his beautiful and possibly tall beloved. The dark Indian dot on her forehead is likened to the constable Saturn.

On the roof of that house of beauty, your face,

Your Indian “Kayvan” stands guard with grace.^[19]

In American Popular Culture

• “Kayvan” is the given name (surname unknown) of the Afghan analogue to Kenny McCormick in the South Park episode, “Osama bin Laden has Farty Pants.” When he and Kenny are both riddled with bullets during a US/Afghan military crossfire near Osama’s cave entrance as seen after the smoke from a bomb clears, the Afghan “Kyle” shouts (in Persian), “!خدایا، آنها کیوان کشته” (“Khodaya, Anha Kayvan o Koshtan!” = “Oh God, they killed Kayvan!”) to which Arkmah Shulur (the Afghan “Stan” and the only Afghan boy whose full name is known [from the letters sent involving the goat], and the only one other than Kayvan whose name is known at all) shouts, “!شما حرامزاده” (“Shoma Haramzadeh!” = “You bastards!” — thus reversing the usual catchphrase lines typically spoken by Stan and Kyle when Kenny dies) and then, in English, after grabbing a gun and aiming it at USAF helicopters, “You murdering Americaaaans!!”^[20] It’s unknown at present whether Kayvan shares Kenny’s Cthulhu-derived curse of attracting death (though that scene does seem to imply at least that much) yet being unable to stay dead.

Given name

• Keyvan Ansari, an Iranian student leader and political activist
• Keyvan Eliasieh, bar-candidate, criminal rights activist, and prominent disc jockey
• Kayvon Fatahalian, an American computer graphics researcher and Professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.
• Keyvan Jenkins, American footballer
• Kayvan Mirhadi, Iranian composer
• Kayvan Mirhadi, Iranian composer
• Kayvan Shahrokni, Canadian athlete
• Kayvan Najarian, Iranian scientist
• Keyvan Nourhaghighi, Senior Iranian Air Force Officer. Holding "Major" rank, officially called Major Keyvan Nourhaghighi, is Fighter Pilot of F-86, F-5 and F-4; the Human Rights activist, writer and translator
• Kayvan Novak, a British Iranian television actor
• Adrian Kayvan Pasdar, an American actor and film director
• Kayvan Rafiee, co-founder at Viva Technics
• Keywan Riahi, Austrian Scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
• Kayvon Zahedi, Canadian ac

Surname

• Azar Kayvan, a Zoroastrian high priest of Istakhr

References

1. Dehkhoda Dictionary "Online". No other meaning is given.
2. Moin, Mohammad, (1997). Farhang-e Farsi (Persian Dictionary), Volume 6, p. 1644, Tehran, Amirkabir, ISBN 964-00-0164-3. No other meaning is given.
3. "Tikaboo Sumerian Dictionary"
4. "Online Akkadian Dictionary", Association Assyrophile de France.
5. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 8, p. 36.
6. "Online Syriac Dictionary", Association Assyrophile de France.
7. A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, D. N. MacKenzie, Oxford University Press, London, 1971, p. 51. "pdf"
8. "Mithraism, it's Influence on Christianity", Iran Chamber Society.
9. Sanai, ghasideh "19", beit 9
10. Under construction.
11. Khajoo Kermani, ghazal "246", beit 7.
12. Sanai, ghasideh "35" beit 21.
13. Rumi, ghazal “149”, beit 4.
14. The “six doors” represent the six directions in a three-dimensional world. Moin, Mohammad, (1997). Farhang-e Farsi (Persian Dictionary), Volume 2, p. 2044, Tehran, Amirkabir, ISBN 964-00-0164-3.
15. Khajoo Kermani, ghazal "84", beit 4.
16. In a musical example, Saturn is "The Bringer of Old Age" in Gustav Holst's "The Planets".
17. Khaghani, ghazal "215", beit 7.
18. Masud Sa'd Salman, ghasideh "1", beit 32.
19. Sa'di, ghazal "626", beit 8.
20. Video clip of described scene at South Park Studios