I recently came across a Whatapp message “India was named after independence and it stands for Independent Nation Declared In August”.
As per socialhoax.com this is a hoax message. The details about naming India is below:
The name of India is a corruption of the word Sindhu. Neighbouring Arabs, Iranians uttered‘s’ as ‘h’ and called this land Hindu. Greeks pronounced this name as Indus.
Sindhu is the name of the Indus River, mentioned in the Rig-Veda, one of the oldest extant Indo-European texts, composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent roughly between 1700-1100 BC. There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the Iranian Avesta, often associated with the early culture of 2200-1600 BC.
The English term is fromἸνδία (Indía), via Latin India. Iindía in Byzantine ethnography denotes the region beyond the Indus (Ἰνδός) River, since alluded to “Indian land”. Ἰνδός, Indos, “an Indian”, from Avestan Hinduš refers to Sindh and is listed as a conquered territory by Persian emperor (550-486 BC) in the terrace inscription.
The name India was known in Old English (between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century AD) and was used in King Alfred’s translation of. The name was, under French influence, replaced by Ynde or Inde. It went into Early Modern English (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650 AD). Thus,Indie appeared the first edition of the King James and the works of William Shakespeare – both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English. The name India then came back to English usage from the 17th century onwards, may be due to the influence of Latin, or Spanish or Portuguese.