How India got its name?

How India got its name?

  India is one of the most important country in the history of mankind. It has population of around 1.3 billion people and this is more than the population of South American continent, North American continent and even the entire European continent. But how India got its name?

  Because India has a very rich and extended history, there are a number of names given to this country by the people of the country. But the names from outsiders include Hind, Hindustan, Al-hind, Hindush, Yindu, India, etc. And all of them have some prefixes and suffixes in common. Almost all the names have In- or Hin- as prefix and -dia or -du as the suffix. Putting these aspects together, we get Hindu or India. So this means that almost all the names given to India might have common origins.

  For example take the word Hindustan which is the name given to India by the Mughals. Here '-stan' means 'the land of'. That is why many countrys have their name ending with -stan like Pakistan, Kazakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Taijikistan, Turkmenistan, etc. Thus Hindustan means the land of Hindus. 

  India is also derived with the same logic. It has a common suffix -ia. -ia in this context also means 'the land of'. Thus many countrys also end with -ia like Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Mongolia, Armenia, Romania, Russia, Namibia, Colombia, Malaysia etc. Thus India means the 'land of the Ind (That is Hindus)'. 

  So India means the 'land of Hindus'. But who are Hindus? There is no religion called as Hindu, nor there was an empire named Hindu. There is one theory for this. The river Sindhu, to the north of India was a crossing point for outsiders to India. People evolved this to Hindu, then Indós, then Indus. The present day name of the river is the Indus. And this turned to India. But what is Sindhu then? Sindhu is a sanskrit word given for any water body. That doesn't make any sense, but India got its name from the river Sindhu. 

Posts before October 2021 have been marked as "Old Posts". Less likely, but they might have out dated or incorrect information, ugly looking bits of code, no labels, etc. Don't get me wrong, many of these posts are top-notch and interesting too.

I thought it would be better not to delete or revamp these posts, even if they suck. The bitter truth is that old works always suck, but I take that as a positive tool to convey that I am growing. Besides there's no better way to showcase my journey without these old, messy, poorly written posts!

Old Post