eh, might as well just get to the point.
Etymology
The name India as used by most European languages came from Latin: India, which came from ancient Greek: Ινδία (Indía) which is from Ινδός (Indós) [ the Indus river], which was borrowed from old Persian: (Hindūš), modern Farsi: هند (Hend), from Sanskrit सिन्धु (Síndhu), which probably came from the verbal root सेधति (Sedhati) meaning to go or move.
POD
Now here's the POD. When the Latin language borrows the Greek word, it enters the language as Hindia rather than India (basically the same as with the word historia, which in ancient Greek was:
ιστορία (istoría)
From that point, everything is the same except India has an H in front of its name. We'd be talking about Hindia in English & Dutch, Hindien in German & Swedish, Hindland in Icelandic and Гиндия (Gindiya) in Russian etc.
This would nicely connect them with the Arabic: الهند (alhind) and the name Hindustan, which with slight variations is used in Tajik, Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Hindi and Turkish to name a few.
Exceptions
Some exceptions include Greek itself and possibly Italian. Greek because there's no H sound in Greek, that sound disappeared quite early on in the language and Italian because that language has (unlike its neighbouring languages) removed silent H in most of its words
Compare Portuguese: hora, horror, história, hemorragia, híbrido, hexágono.
With Italian: ora, orrore, storia, emorragia, ibrido, esagono.
So Italian keeping India as its standard isn't hard to imagine.
Speaking of Portuguese, I searched Hindia to see if I found something and apparently, Portuguese once wrote the name as Hindia, (now they spell it as Índia).
Additional differences in English
And at least for English, additional changes include: (West & East) Indies are now Hindies, and the old name for Native Americans would be Hindian(s).
Question
And does this small difference in the name make any huge world-changing difference I didn't take into account?
Etymology
The name India as used by most European languages came from Latin: India, which came from ancient Greek: Ινδία (Indía) which is from Ινδός (Indós) [ the Indus river], which was borrowed from old Persian: (Hindūš), modern Farsi: هند (Hend), from Sanskrit सिन्धु (Síndhu), which probably came from the verbal root सेधति (Sedhati) meaning to go or move.
POD
Now here's the POD. When the Latin language borrows the Greek word, it enters the language as Hindia rather than India (basically the same as with the word historia, which in ancient Greek was:
ιστορία (istoría)
From that point, everything is the same except India has an H in front of its name. We'd be talking about Hindia in English & Dutch, Hindien in German & Swedish, Hindland in Icelandic and Гиндия (Gindiya) in Russian etc.
This would nicely connect them with the Arabic: الهند (alhind) and the name Hindustan, which with slight variations is used in Tajik, Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Hindi and Turkish to name a few.
Exceptions
Some exceptions include Greek itself and possibly Italian. Greek because there's no H sound in Greek, that sound disappeared quite early on in the language and Italian because that language has (unlike its neighbouring languages) removed silent H in most of its words
Compare Portuguese: hora, horror, história, hemorragia, híbrido, hexágono.
With Italian: ora, orrore, storia, emorragia, ibrido, esagono.
So Italian keeping India as its standard isn't hard to imagine.
Speaking of Portuguese, I searched Hindia to see if I found something and apparently, Portuguese once wrote the name as Hindia, (now they spell it as Índia).
Additional differences in English
And at least for English, additional changes include: (West & East) Indies are now Hindies, and the old name for Native Americans would be Hindian(s).
Question
And does this small difference in the name make any huge world-changing difference I didn't take into account?
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