As you know, Indonesia is a country in South East Asia. The capital city is in Jakarta which its population is very crowded to a small city. Many people from various state come to this city with a hope for a better life. Indonesia shared land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Malaysia. The population in Indonesia itself is around 230 million people. Indonesia is a republic, with an elected legislature and president.
“The name Indonesia derives from the Latin Indus, meaning “India”, and the Greek nesos, meaning “island”. The name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians — and, his preference, Malayunesians — for the inhabitants of the “Indian Archipelago or Malayan Archipelago”. In the same publication, a student of Earl’s, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to useIndonesia. Instead, they used the terms Malay Archipelago (Maleische Archipel); the Netherlands East Indies (Nederlandsch Oost Indië), popularly Indië; the East (de Oost); and even Insulinde.
From 1900, the name Indonesia became more common in academic circles outside the Netherlands, and Indonesian nationalist groups adopted it for political expression. Adolf Bastian, of the University of Berlin, popularized the name through his book Indonesien oder die Inseln des Malayischen Archipels, 1884–1894. The first Indonesian scholar to use the name was Suwardi Suryaningrat (Ki Hajar Dewantara), when he established a press bureau in the Netherlands with the name Indonesisch Pers-bureau in 1913.”
But not many people know what Indonesia was called before it. Here some list of name of it :
- Dirgantara (when they still worshipped Durga Goddess)
- Swargantara (when they had become more independent)
- Dwipantara (when Indonesia got split into 2 big division)
- Nusantara (when that 2 division, Keraton and Kedaton, united)
- Indonesia (changed from a kingdom to a republic)
quote taken from www.en.wikipedia.org/Indonesia
source are from a note that my teacher made
