1 Entering the New Era of the Persian Language: Starting from Ruzbeh’s account of the linguistic situation in the 7 th century, accounts and statements of other Arabic and Iranian authors about the linguistic situation in 8 th -11 th centuries Iran serve to complement the information given by Ruzbeh and to follow up on the evolution of Persian during that time. These complementary accounts help to draw a more lively and complete picture of the usage of Persian and of the views of the people on the language(s) they used. It must be borne in mind that language names are not always stable, but may be flexible and subject to semantic change in the course of time. Ruzbeh himself gave a good example of this flexibility. He used the term 'Pārsi' in its specific meaning of 'southern Persian' but also as a cover term meaning 'Iranian', covering all languages (even non- Iranian ones) that were spoken in Iran 1 ; from this meaning, the term Pārsi-(ye-)Dari 'the Pārsi (variant, namely) Dari' would later be derived. 1 Lazard, 1971: p. 363.