The changing of Persia's name to Iran in 1935 was done by the Shah at the suggestion of the German ambassador to Iran as an act of "Aryan solidarity".[68] However the Iranians had always called their country "Iran", a name that predated the rise of Nazi Germany by more than a thousand years.[69] On the eve of World War II Germany was already Iran's single-biggest trading partner, followed by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States.[68]