Lake Urmia is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is located between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan in Iran, and west of the southern portion of the Caspian Sea. At its greatest extent, it was the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth, with a surface area of approximately , a length of , a width of , and a maximum depth of . By late 2017, the lake had shrunk to 10% of its former size (and 1/60 of water volume in 1998) due to persistent general drought in Iran, but also the damming of the local rivers that flow into it, and the pumping of groundwater from the surrounding area. This dry spell was broken in 2019 and the lake is now filling up once again, due to both increased rain and water diversion from the Zab River by the Lake Urmia Restoration Program. Lake Urmia, along with its approximately 102 (former) islands, is protected as a national park by the Iranian Department of Environment. Names and etymologies Richard Nelson Frye suggested an Urartian origin for the name, while T. Burrow connected the origin of the name Urmia to Indo-Iranian urmi- "wave" and urmya- "undulating, wavy". A more likely etymology would be from Neo-Aramaic Assyrian-Chaldean spoken by the shrinking number of the ancient Christian population of the nearby city of Urmia, consisting of ur meaning "city," and mia meaning "water." Together, the "water city", what Urmia city is: a city on the waters of the eponymous lake. The name could also derive from the combination of the Assyrian Aramaic words Ur (; a common name for cities around Mesopotamia, meaning "city") and Mia (), "City of Water" referring to the city nearby. Locally, the lake is referred to in Persian as Daryâče-ye Orumiye (), in Azerbaijani as Urmu gölü (), and in Kurdish as Deryaçeya Wirmê. The traditional Armenian name is Kaputan tsov (), literally "blue sea". Residents of Shahi Island refer to the lake in Azerbaijani as Daryā (, meaning "Sea"). Its Old Persian name was Chichast, meaning "glittering", a reference to the glittering mineral particles suspended in the water of the lake and found along its shores. In medieval times it came to be known as Lake Spauta or Lake Kabuda (Kabodan) in Armenian geography, from the word for "azure" in Persian, or kapuyt ()