the united nations group of experts on geographical names discussed the naming issue during its 23rd session, held in vienna from 28 march to 4 april 2006. according to the report of the meeting, "it is interesting that from among 6000 existing historical maps published up to 1890, there are only three maps mentioning the names of basreh gulf, qatif gulf, and arabic gulf, in addition to which the name of small gulfs(bay) located at the coast with local use can be also named such as siraf gulf(bay), basreh gulf, bahrain gulf,…. but such names are not applied to the entirety of the persian gulf. it is obvious that the promotional use by the arabs of the three aforementioned maps, whose identity and originality are not clear, in comparison with 6000 maps and more than 200 historical and tourism books from irastus to herodotus to estakhri and ibn houghal, who have all called the water body, persian gulf, shall lack any value."