India carries two ancient names debated to this day: Bharat and India. As per Puranic geography, the earth consisted of seven islands, with Jambudvipa at the centre - within it lay Bharatavarsha, named either after King Dushyant's son Bharat from the Mahabharata, or Chakravartin Bharat, son of the Jain tirthankara Rishabh. A shloka in the Vishnu Purana describes Bharata as the territory lying north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains, home to the descendants of Lord Bharat.
How India Got Its Name: Persian king Darius, who ruled from 550-486 BCE, conquered the northwestern Indian subcontinent and named the region 'Hindush' - a linguistic shift from 'Sindhu' (the river) as Persian pronunciation changed 's' sounds to 'h'. The Greeks, active in the region at the time, adopted this as 'Indos', since Greek script didn't pronounce 'h' - and the region around the Indus came to be called India. The Sassanid dynasty of Iran later added the suffix 'stan', giving rise to 'Hindustan' around 1700 years ago.
Post-Independence: When India's constitution was drafted in 1949, both names were debated extensively. Some members proposed making Bharat or Hind the primary name with India only used in English, while others cited the Puranas and Mahabharata to argue Bharat should be the sole name. In the end, Article 1 of the Constitution adopted both: "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States" - a decision that has been revisited in petitions since, including one rejected by the Supreme Court in 2020.