The word Indonesia comes from the Latin ‘Indus’ which means “India” and the Greek ‘Nesos’ which means “Island”. The name far predates the formation of the independent nation Indonesia to the 18th century. George Earl, an English ethnologist, suggested the term Indunesians to refer to the inhabitants of the “Indian Archipelago”. But the Dutch, during their colony were reluctant to use that term. Instead, they were using other terms to refer to Indonesia, one of them was the Netherlands East Indies or the Dutch East Indies (Oost Indies.)

But since 1900, the previous term ‘Indonesia’ become more widely used in academic circles outside the Netherlands and Indonesian nationalist groups adopted this name for political expression. It was Adolf Bastian, a German  scholar from the University of Berlin, who popularized the name through his book, “Indonesien – Oder Die Inseln des Malayischen Archipels”. The first Indonesian scholar who used 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.

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