student asking question

Does "India" and "Indonesia" are historically related? Why would they both have the name "Indo-"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

This is a great question! There is a story behind the similar names. Although Indonesia did not become the official name of the country until it became independent from the Netherlands in 1945, the word "Indonesia" was used by geographers from the late 19th century and is likely to have been created from a combination of the two words "indos," the Latin/Greek word for “India,” and "nesos," a Greek word meaning “island.”

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