How Each Asian Country Got its Name

The word Asia is derived from the Ancient Greek word, initially used by Herodotus to refer to Anatolia or the Persian Empire. It was originally merely a name for the timeline territory known to the Hittites as Assuwa on the east bank of the Aegean Sea. The Isthmus of Suez, the narrowest opening between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez, is the most common line used to divide Africa and Asia today, and the Suez Canal follows this route. As a result, the Sinai Peninsula is classified as an Asian territory, and Egypt is ranked as a transcontinental nation. East Asia is China, and South Asia is India. 

Asia

In Asia, 1519–: The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan was the first to enter Asia from the east, leaving Spain with 5 ships and 270 men in 1519. In 1520, he discovered the Strait of Magellan, now known as the Strait of Magellan.

Central Asia is a region in Asia between the Caspian Sea and Western China. Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are all primarily Muslim countries that were once Soviet republics, except for Afghanistan.

East Asia, often known as East Asia, refers to the eastern half of the Asian continent and the island nation of Japan. The UN geoscheme identifies five sovereign countries, the Chinese Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and the Republic of China (Taiwan), with a disputed political status.

Asia is a continent with a diverse range of countries. Each country’s name reflects the region it is located in or a geographical aspect. The names of Asian countries such as China, Japan, and Korea are derived from the country’s native language. The meaning of their name can vary depending on the overlapping timelines.

Zhongguo, China

The Persians rendered the Sanskrit Cina (derived from the name of the Chinese Qin Dynasty, pronounced ‘Chin’) as ‘Cin,’ and the name seems to have gained popularity through trade along the Silk Road.

In the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689, Zhongguo was adopted as the Chinese nation’s official name for the first time. Zion designated the short-form Chinese name for the Republic of China in 1912, and the People’s Republic inherited the title in 1949. The Shang governed the Yellow River valley, widely regarded as China’s cradle. 

On the other hand, Neolithic civilisations emerged around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers at different cultural centres. These civilisations around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers arose millennia before the Shang.

China, also spelt (Pinyin) Zhongguo or (Wade-Giles romanisation) Chung-Kuo, officially People’s Republic of China or Chinese (Pinyin) Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo or (Wade-Giles romanisation) Chung-Hua Jen-min Kung-ho-Kuo, is an East Asian country.

Afghanistan

The 16th-century Mughal kings Babur and his descendants mention the name Afghanistan in literature, referring to the land between Khorasan, Kabulistan, and the Indus River, which was populated by Afghan tribes.

The term Afn was originally recorded in Arabic and Persian in the 10th-century geography book Hudud al-‘Alam. The suffix “-stan” is a Persian suffix that means “place of.” In a historical sense, “Afghanistan” thus means “country of the Afghans” or “land of the Pashtuns.”

The existing borders of Afghanistan were set in the late 19th century as part of the “Great Game” rivalry between imperial Britain and tsarist Russia, which Rudyard Kipling coined. Afghanistan has become a target in ideological and commercial power rivalries.

The Durand Line Agreement was signed on November 12, 1893, at the end of the first phase of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. During this overlapping timeline, the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 was ratified on August 8, 1919, at the end of the Third Anglo-Afghan War.

Foreign powers have exacerbated the war at every stage by helping one side over the other. Afghanistan was a monarchy under Muhammad Zahir Shah, who came to power in 1933 and reigned until 1978 when civil war broke out. The area was known as Khorsn in the Middle Ages until the 18th century. Today, Balkh, Herat, Ghazni, and Kabul are prominent Khorsn cities.

Indonesia

Indonesia is a multiparty presidential representative democratic republic. The president is the front of the state, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the head of government. Although Indonesia is primarily located in Asia, part of its compromising territories is in Oceania, making it a transcontinental country. Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi are the four major islands in Indonesia.

Although Indonesia did not become the country’s official name until independence, a German geographer first used it in 1884; it is assumed to derive from the Greek words Lindos, which means “India,” and nesos, which means “island.” 

India

The Republic of India’s official name is derived from the Sanskrit name ‘Sindhu,’ which refers to the Indus River.

In the 5th century BCE, the Persians invaded both the Indian subcontinent and Greece, and ‘Sindhu’ became ‘Hindus’ to denote the ‘country of Hindus.’ ‘Hindus’ became ‘Indos’ after the Greek Herodotus (4th century BC), and it first appeared in Old English in the 9th century. Finally, in the 17th century, the word ‘Indos’ made way to the coined term ‘India’ via Modern English.

The Indian Plate, once part of the compromising territory of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, began a north-eastward drift 75 million years ago, triggered by seafloor spreading to its south-west, then south and southeast.

When President Harry S. Truman wrote a congratulatory telegram to Lord Louis Mountbatten, Governor-General of the Indian Dominion, on August 15, 1947, the United States recognised the Union of India as an independent state. On this day, the Union of India and Pakistan was formed from the ex- “British India” that was a part of the British Empire, according to the British Parliament’s India Independence Act of July 18, 1947.

The standard process that got to Indian independence began with a report issued by the British government on May 16, 1946, recommending the formation of an interim administration in India to draft a constitution as part of a process that would lead to India’s independence from the United Kingdom. On September 2, 1946, an Interim Authority of India was founded, and it was with this government that the United States established diplomatic ties before India’s actual independence.

Conclusion:

Above, it is written about the compromising territories and the overlapping timelines of the Asian countries. It clearly explains the changes in Asian countries’ name origins and how their culture responds to them.  So, this entire article is mainly about how the following Asian countries listed above got their names and how they represent their history or culture.