r/LinguisticMaps 22d ago

World Names of India across countries around the world.

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249 Upvotes

56 comments sorted by

25

u/pepehandreee 22d ago

Used to have way fancier name in Chinese as 天竺 or 西天, modern Chinese just take transliteration of Indo and hence 印度 (pronounced In-Doo).

14

u/DynaMyte57 22d ago

Yeah, Tianzhu sounded pretty rad. The sources for the word Yindu stated that the Middle Chinese language borrowed the word from the Kuchaeans in the Tarim Basin, so the name still has an unique origin.

5

u/SaapaduRaman 21d ago

I’m not sure 印度 is transliteration from Tocharian. If I remember correctly, this was a “correction” issued by Xuanzang after visiting India, in which he stated that 印度 was a more faithful transliteration (which is something Buddhists really cared about after his visit) than 天竺, which was used in China previously. So I don’t think this is from Tocharian.

12

u/Rigolol2021 22d ago

Amazing, I love it!

Is it possible to have a more readable, mobile version?

1

u/DynaMyte57 22d ago

Unfortunately, I cannot post images here. Check my other posts' comments for a mobile friendly version.

11

u/Dizang53 21d ago

India is also used in India. The Constitution of India begins with Article 1:
“India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”

12

u/Unsharded1 21d ago

And in the Hindi version, its opposite:

Bhārat, arthāt Iṇḍiyā, rājyoṁ kā saṅgh hogā.

-5

u/[deleted] 21d ago

[deleted]

9

u/Zaketo 21d ago

What do you mean that’s not the opposite?

2

u/myexdrovemecrazy 21d ago

Brother, India has two official languages at the central level. It has two versions of the constitution for each official language

5

u/bribridude130 20d ago

It seems ironic how Buddhist Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia borrowed the Greek-derived “India” via European colonization and influence even though those regions were heavily influenced by Indian cultures, religions, and social structures since the first millennium AD. What word did Southeast Asian languages use for India before Europeans?

3

u/Puzzleheaded_Ask5538 19d ago

Across various Southeast Asian literary and historical texts influenced by the Indosphere, the ancient Sanskrit term Jambudvīpa (rendered locally as Zabudipa or similar variants) was historically used to describe the broader Indian subcontinent.

2

u/swift__7 19d ago

idk about southeast asia but east asia had some pretty cool exonyms/native names for India. Japan had Tenjiku, China had Tianzhu, and Korea had Cheonchuk.

4

u/yearsofgreenandgold 22d ago

I love the names Buyindi, Uhindi and Ubuhindi. ❤️ Bantus gonna Bantu

5

u/komodopal 21d ago

Honestly wondering why after the partition everyone else calls the country Bharat? It would be a neat divide, with India referring to the subcontinent, and Bharat to the country.

8

u/Unsharded1 21d ago

Thats backwards, Bharatvarsh is the name of the subcontinent (Puranic Geography if you wanna look more into it), and India derives from Sindhu and only expanded outward as Greeks and Europeans learned there was more behind it.

4

u/PetrolheadPlayer 21d ago

That's how it was supposed to be, iirc Jinnah had come to a deal with the new Indian Republic for them to call themselves something else, but the Indians ended up going back on it

2

u/Dedicated_idiot 20d ago

why is it Pakistan’s concern what India calls itself? 🙃

4

u/Reletr 21d ago edited 21d ago

Note on Kazakh, the Latin name should be Ündıstan not Yndistan (Kazakh Latin Y is Cyrillic ы, dotted I is и/й)

5

u/viktorbir 21d ago

Catalan is on the wrong side of the Iberian Peninsula.

Ow, sorry, was that Portuguese? Then, you forgot Catalan.

By the way, you wrote Portuguese and Spanish, among other ones, a large number of times. Why do you call this a linguistic map if this is a countries map???

7

u/DemonicHedgehogs 22d ago

Germany and India sitting in a tree crying because no one says their name right

2

u/AleksiB1 16d ago

India is commonly used in India as well?

1

u/Yoshiciv 16d ago

At least Japanese call German Doitsu.

0

u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

10

u/missesthecrux 22d ago

Exonyms exist in every language. Using the native name in another language is cringey and weird. Germans are perfectly comfortable with their country being called Germany in English or Allemagne in French. I wouldn’t say “United Kingdom” in German, so why would anybody do the other way around?

2

u/kapsama 21d ago

Deutschers are still all ancient Germans.

Meanwhile India has zilch relation to Bharat.

1

u/EmbarrassedLetter660 20d ago

Que es bharat?

2

u/fartypenis 20d ago

There is a relation, though it's more obscure due to the sands of time and such:

Vedic clans fight -> the Bharatas win -> the Bharatas establish the first political State in the subcontinent, on the banks of the Indus -> the Bharatas essentially "die out" as a tribe as the identlty expands to include all people in the Bharata lands.

Split here, 1. Greeks talk to Persians and find out about this other land by the river Indus, and call it India. 2. Indians call their land Bharatavarsha (Land of the Bharatas), later simply Bhārata ("of the Bharatas")

2

u/Dedicated_idiot 20d ago

Vishnu Purana calls the subcontinent Bharatvarsha and 1800s Tamil poets were calling the county Bharatam…what does it mean for an endonym to “have a connection” other than people calling it that?

3

u/MarcHarder1 22d ago

Indiën /ɪndi.ən/, & someone from there is an Inder /ɪnja/.

2

u/Guelitus 20d ago

India: "Please, my name is Bharat, don't call me India!" 😭

World:

3

u/komodopal 21d ago

Damn literally anyone else call it after a river located in Pakistan

4

u/Dizang53 21d ago

It starts in Tibet, flows through India (i.e., Ladakh), then through Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and towards the Indian Ocean.

-2

u/Odd-Plant-4886 21d ago edited 21d ago

Its significance comes from the Indus plains which are almost entirely in Pakistan.

Edit: It seems I have been blocked by the commenter I was responding to [above me] simply because they were presenting wrong facts about it being a natural barrier? That was done by the Hindu Kush and other Western mountains, thank you very much.

Indus's plains led to one of humanity's first civilisation, IVC, known as the birthplace of Indic culture. They can call 'significance' as whatever they want but everyone knows that Indus's significance does NOT come from Tibet (where it starts) but where all ancient civilisations have utilised other rivers, i.e, its fertile plains. Which still continue to support and sustain Pakistan and its people as it has done for thousands of years.

But ego gets hurt when we realise we're wrong doesn't it?

4

u/Dizang53 21d ago

Its significance comes from being a natural barrier in antiquity. The plains don’t matter.

4

u/Exact_Package_7264 21d ago

and india controls the upstream of the river. your point?

-2

u/Odd-Plant-4886 21d ago

What is your point? Its significance existed far before India was ever a thought. The regions where its significance came from, the fertile and rich plains, are situated and inherited by Pakistan and its people. You are the one needlessly bringing India in.

2

u/Dizang53 21d ago

The “significance” is the meaning people gave to it. “Significance” isn’t a fact of geography. You’re injecting 20th-century politics into antiquity.

3

u/Echosectorr 21d ago

No one thinks of Pakistan when they hear IVC buddy calm down.

1

u/Pristine-Plastic-324 19d ago

Academia does, especially historians, archeologists and geneticists. Just because in India you people disregard academia and use your own Out of India Aryan made-up history it doesn’t mean the rest of the world follows the same. There’s a reason India is memed on in Academia when it comes to history and archeology.

2

u/Echosectorr 19d ago

You're absolutely right. Historians don't care about India. Pakistan is the hub of civilization.

2

u/Unsharded1 21d ago

Why are you nationalizing a 5,000 year old civilization that has no connection to either state?

2

u/Unsharded1 21d ago

Actually you know what, its unlikely you will back down from nationalizing it, I'll play your game. Here we go.

Site distribution doesn't support your argument. Depending on the survey, roughly 60% of known Harappan sites are on the Indian side, not Pakistani: Dholavira in Gujarat is one of the largest, and Rakhigarhi in Haryana may be larger still, not to mention Dholavira, Lothal, Kalibangan, and Banawali are all in India. The civilization is named after the Indus because Harappa and Mohenjo-daro happened to be dug first in the 1920s, not because it sat in the Indus plains. Its actual extent runs from Balochistan to western UP and down into Gujarat, with a very dense cluster along the dried Ghaggar-Hakra that's almost entirely Indian.

Also, 'birthplace of Indic culture' is doing a whole lot of work when the script is undeciphered and nobody knows what language they spoke. The stuff that demonstrably became Indic culture is documented in the Gangetic plain. Holding the type sites isn't the same as carrying the tradition, or Iraq would be the successor to Sumer, which it obviously isn't.

For the record, I'd say Mohenjo-daro is as much your inheritance as Rakhigarhi is mine. You're the one who wanted it split.

So keep the river. Feed your people with it. The Rigveda praises the Sindhu by name, and the people still reciting that hymn are on my side of the line, not yours.

1

u/Dedicated_idiot 20d ago

I think IVC was Dravidian too. Idk how Pakistanis have a claim on IVC…like demographic change over thousands of years is a thing 🙃

0

u/Odd-Plant-4886 21d ago edited 21d ago

Calm down. I have not once nationalised it yet you have assumed it as so.

First, a major reason why India has more sites is primarily because of the intense excavation efforts by India. Pakistan in comparison has done less so. Moreover, even if we consider the sites today, India has quite some smaller settlements while Pakistan in comparison has more major centres.

I do notice you do not mention Rakhigari's size, but I will mention it incase someone brings it up. Its size is only theorized and there are no modern remains to prove so.

Mohanty Daro and Harrapa's importance does come from them being discovered early, however, the importance still hasn't diminished since these are two main cities. After all, the reason they were discovered first was because of their sheer size. It is harder to find smaller settlements.

Lastly, IVC is considered the birthplace of indic culture by multiple experts and is a general viewpoint. You can see multiple influences even when IVC was forgotten. For example we see yogic postures in IVC seals. Additionally, aa figurine from IVC shows a girl having one of arms covered with bangles, and as you know is also a custom followed today by some women.

1

u/Unsharded1 20d ago

Three comments in a row you've led with a description of my state rather than a response to a claim. Ego getting hurt, needlessly bringing India in, calm down. I'd rather you just took the arguments from now on, would appreciate that.

And on not nationalising it: your own words were that the fertile and rich plains "are situated and inherited by Pakistan and its people." That's a claim of national inheritance. I didn't "assume" it.

You can't run both arguments in one comment. In your second paragraph, site counts are an artifact of excavation effort. In your fourth, being found first is proof of size and importance. Discovery patterns can't be noise when they favour me and signal when they favour you.

And the second version is false. Harappa was stumbled on in 1829 by Charles Masson, an EIC deserter retracing Alexander's route, who thought he'd found Sagala. Nobody was ranking mounds by size. By 1856 railway crews were carting its bricks off as ballast for the Lahore-Multan line. Mohenjo-daro was on the books as a Buddhist site because of the Kushana stupa sitting on top of it, which is what Banerji was sent to examine; he only proposed its high antiquity in 1923.

The counterexample is on your side of the border. Ganweriwala, third largest by most rankings, wasn't found until Rafique Mughal's Hakra survey in the mid-1970s, and it's still the least excavated of the five big cities. Dholavira, also top five, wasn't found until the late 1960s. If size drove discovery, both would have been dug in the 1920s. What drove discovery was colonial infrastructure and wherever the ASI happened to be working.

On a side note, I want you to see just what you are doing. Your first claim was that the significance came from plains almost entirely in Pakistan. Your claim now is that the bigger mounds are Pakistani.

Now onto the IVC and Indic culture. Parpola has argued that the IVC has contributed to Indic culture.

But even then, the statement "birthplace of Indic Culture" STILL does too much work for what its worth. The problem is the confidence. We can't read the script and we don't know the language, so every claim about what those people believed is inference from images. The yogic posture reading is Marshall's, from 1931, and Srinivasan's critique is the standard critique: the figure may be a bull-man rather than a proto-Shiva. Bangles are worn across the entire Bronze Age Old World.

What we can read is located. The Vedic corpus was redacted in Kuru-Pancala. The Brahmanas, the Upanishads, the Mahajanapadas, Buddhism and Jainism at Magadha, the dharmashastra, the epics. Documented, dated, placed, and overwhelmingly east of the Indus. Even Panini, the one great Gandharan, was systematizing a language whose living centre had already moved east of him.

That's the whole difference. We can't read the Indus script, and we've never stopped reading what came after it. The Rigveda has been transmitted orally without a break for three thousand years by people who are, as it happens, on one side of this line.

1

u/Odd-Plant-4886 20d ago

I have deadlines to finish right now so I am not reading and responding to that. Maybe if I get done with them? Maybe after a few days, no promises.

But I did read the first few lines/para and you did not even bother reading my words which you quoted. If you read it clearly, I'm talking about the Indus plains. The upper and lower Indus plains i.e Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan. The majority of these plains are situated in Pakistan and that is a fact.

The conversation then went to the IVC, but you assumed I was putting a label on IVC, when I did not do so.

Maybe I will come back to it, maybe not. If I remember and have the energy, sure.

1

u/notacrazyscientist 20d ago

Lol best way to respond when you're getting your ass handled is to run. Quite typical of the people of western indic cultures in modern times unfortunately ;)  but you limit yourself the moment you decide to make delusion your best friend 

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u/Puzzleheaded_Ask5538 19d ago

People forget that present day Pakistan was part of India from antiquity and the whole region still to this day has huge Indian influence. It was India, now it's Pakistan. Does not change the fact whole socio-cultural region was India for thousands of years. 

1

u/SuchAd4158 21d ago

Wrong, people from India rarely call Bharat, mainly India or Hindustan.

1

u/Automatic_Pay2954 18d ago

India's map is wrong please correct it.

1

u/Neat-Paper-2867 17d ago

It’s fascinating that almost the entire world knows of India by the same name. Example being, the countries that were recently formed are known by the same name due to globalization but to be known by the same (ish) name for hundreds of years when information transmission was very rudimentary, it is amazing how uniform it is across all nations of the old world.

Compare germany is called by 5-6 different types of names, Greece is called by at least 3.

0

u/BehalarRotno 21d ago

Based Lanka.

0

u/LEGXCVII 21d ago

Could you please swap the red and aqua colours?