It is a true sign language, unlike the Baghcheban phonetic hand alphabet, which is a form of cued speech.
The estimate of the population of the deaf community in Iran varies between 1.5 and 3 million; Siyavoshi (2017) published that the Iranian Department of Health and Welfare reported 200,000 people self-identifying as deaf when registering for social and medical services.
In 2014, Guity, Abbas Behmanesh, and Jodie Novak created a video describing the linguistic properties of Zaban Eshareh Irani, the transliteration of the Persian phrase meaning Iranian Sign Language.
Following the video's release, the term Zaban Eshareh Irani gained traction in social media use, particularly among deaf communities in ethnic groups, such as Gilaks, Kurds, and Baloch people whose primary language is not Farsi and felt alienated from terms such as Farsi Sign Language.
Consequently, Guity and Dr. Sara Siyavoshi, a hearing linguist from Iran, proposed the name Esharani, derived from the Persian morpheme eshar (sign), ran (Iran), and the suffix -i, commonly used for language names in Persian.