Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Indonesian Etymology

The word "Indonesia" is derived from the Latin Indus, meaning "Indian" and nesos Greek word meaning "island". So, says Indonesia means the territory of the Indian islands, or archipelago located in the Indies, which indicates that the name was formed long before Indonesia became a sovereign state. In 1850, George Earl, a British ethnologist, originally proposed the term Indunesia and Malayunesia to residents "Indian Archipelago or Malay Archipelago". Disciple of Earl, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym of the word India Islands. However, Dutch academics writing in the media do not use the word Dutch East Indies Indonesia, but the terms Malay Archipelago (Maleische Archipel); Dutch East Indies (Nederlandsch Oost Indie), or Indian (Indie), Eastern (de Oost), and even Insulinde (this term introduced in 1860 in the novel Max Havelaar (1859), written by Multatuli, the criticism of Dutch colonialism)

Since 1900, the name Indonesia became more common in academic circles outside the Netherlands, and Indonesian nationalist groups adopted it for political expression. Adolf Bastian from the University of Berlin popularize this name through the book Indonesien oder die Inseln des Malayischen Archipels, 1884-1894. Indonesia's first student to use it is Suwardi Suryaningrat (Ki Hajar Dewantara), when he established a news agency in the Netherlands with the name Indonesisch Press Bureau in 1913.

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