What would the Frenchified version of Bharat be?

Bison

Banned
IOTL people also said "India", not "Bharat". Until the rise of the BJP I hadn't heard of the term either.
Yeah, we should stick to India. Majority religion: Hindu (Indian) Majority language: Hindi (Indian) I dont like the trend, in general, of substituting historical exonyms with adapted endonyms. I like Burma more than Myanmar, Ceylon more than Sri Lanka.
 
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It would be the same as it is now. France's empire in India was almost entirely in the south, which was linguistically and culturally distinct from the areas called Bharat. India, Hindi, and Hinduism are a somewhat deceptive terms in that's they are used to signify everything from India as being Indian and everything belonging to everyone. Anyways, does France have a company for India to act with the autonomy that the English one did?
 
LSCatilina saidAs an aside, is there a reason why French ATL names generally have to involve a determinant? I mean, it doesn't in reality, but if you look at the Liste des pays du monde at the French Wikipedia you see a lot of names with a determinant so IMO that's probably the reason why it occurs in so many ATL's
 
LSCatilina saidAs an aside, is there a reason why French ATL names generally have to involve a determinant? I mean, it doesn't in reality, but if you look at the Liste des pays du monde at the French Wikipedia you see a lot of names with a determinant so IMO that's probably the reason why it occurs in so many ATL's

French is such a complicated language :
  • Grammar : country names are a class of non-aminated named entities which mandates a determinant if used in a sentence. "L'Inde est un beau pays" = "India is a fine country" "Je vais dans le nord de l'Inde" "I am going toNorthern India" "Menaces sur l'économie de l'Inde" "India economy threatened". Same goes for ships and archipelagoes, but not for personal names, animal names, demonymes, cities or islands. Country named after such entities (Cuba, Djibouti, Israel) follow the same rules, ie no determinant.
  • Naming convention : in official names, the determinant is used or not depending on the country name grammatical genre, with a preference to use the shortest name possible
    • Country name used with plural : always used. "République des Fidji" = "Republic of Fiji"
    • Country name used with masculine : historically not used, but common in the later XXth history. So, "old" countries like Danmark or Portugal ("Royaume de Danemark", "République de Portugal") v. "new" ones ("République démocratique du Timor oriental", "République du Rwanda"). The non-determinant are used less and less often, even if still correct. As a relic of the former convention, the determinant is never used in a list ("Danemark, Timor, Rwanda", not "Danemark, Le Timor, Le Rwanda")
      • Exception : when the name of the country begins with a vowel ("République d'Equateur", "Sultanat d'Oman")
    • Country name used with feminine : never used.
      • Exception : India ("République de l'Inde") ! I cannot figure why.
 
French is such a complicated language :

It's not that complicated - it's basically the German of the Romance languages (which is the only way I can explain grammatical gender assignment). Besides, many of the same rules pertaining to the articles also apply to other Romance languages - i.e. in Portuguese, Brazil requires a masculine article (i.e. «no Brasil» "in Brazil") but Portugal does not (i.e. «em Portugal» "in Portugal"), though when Portugal is used as a noun everything else must agree with the feminine gender (i.e. the national anthem «A Portuguesa»).
 
Couldn’t one of the other native terms for India have won out too? So we end up with a Frenchified version of any of these?

Āryāvarta

Bhārata

Jambudvīpa

Nābhivarṣa

Hind / Hindustan

Ariavane

Baratie

Geambevie (Jean-Boeufs-Vie as a pronunciation)

Nambevase (even though it would fit more for a marshy region)

Indes

But, as said previously, India was already a known name, so if there happens that in some TL France needs a name for India, it would be because they wouldn't have all of India, so one should be more based on what the names of the different provinces of "Indes Orientales Françaises" are, that's the true question. Because french administrators love renaming cities.
 
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