The word-origin of the term caviar has been a subject of Western scholarly curiosity as late as the mid-18^th century. The lexical evidence of the term’s existence as hāvyār and khāviār in the Ottoman Turkish language dates back to the mid-17^th century, if not much earlier. The attested proof of the term’s existence in the form of the Greek χαβιάρι (khaviari) dates back to Middle Ages. Yet, it is not until the 20^th century that the term khāviār appears in the Persian lexicon, giving rise to the tantalizing thought that the term which applies to Iran’s once most-prized epicurean export may not be Persian. Etymological theories about the term abound, yet none of them offers a convincing proof of the term originating in Greek, Ossetic/Gypsy, Persian, Roman, Russian, Tatar or Turkish languages. 

In this work, Guive Mirfendereski, the author of A Diplomatic History of the Caspian Sea (Palgrave 2001) and entries about the Caspian Sea in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History and Encyclopædia Iranica, combines knowledge of history and geography, of ichthyology, and of the cultural and culinary influences of the lower tidelands of the Caspian Sea in order to suggest a unified field theory capable of fixing the likely origin of the term caviar in the term ashpal, the longstanding word  for fish eggs (roe) in the Gilaki and Tabari languages spoken on the Iranian littoral of the Caspian Sea. In so doing, the author pulls together detailed information from a variety of primary and secondary sources, including recent Iranian scholarship, recast in a series of readable and instructive vignettes framed in the context of the broader piscine history of the Iranian coast.