The word India comes from the Indus, called Sindhu in Sanskrit; the Iranians and the Greeks who came through the northwest about 2500 years ago and were familiar with the Indus, called it the Hindos or the Indos, and the land to the east of the river was called India. The English term is from Greek Ἰνδία (Indía). Iindía in Byzantine ethnography denotes the region beyond the Indus (Ἰνδός) River, since Herodotus alluded to "Indian land". Ἰνδός, Indos, "an Indian", from Avestan Hinduš refers to Sindh and is listed as a conquered territory by Persian emperor Darius I (550-486 BC) in the Persepolis terrace inscription.

The Greeks who had acquired the knowledge of ‘Hind’ from the Persians about 2500 years ago, transliterated it as ‘Indus’, and by the time the Macedonian ruler Alexander invaded India in the third century BCE, ‘India’ had come to be identified with the region beyond the Indus. Therefore, the name ‘India’ was not given by the British after Independence.

The Chinese first knew India during the reign of Emperor Wuti of later Han dynasty in the second century before Christ. They called this land Yuantu or Yin-tu, a variation of Hindu or Sindhu. In the official record of the Tang dynasty in the seventh century CE India was a country of five divisions. Quite often the royal dispatches called India as Magadha, after the name of the best known and the richest province.

The most popular reference to a geographical area being described as Bharat is in the Vishnu Purana: "Uttaram yat samudrasya, Himadreschaiva dakshinam, varsham tad Bharatam nama Bharati yatra santatih", meaning, the country that lies to the north of the ocean and to the south of the snowy mountains is called Bharata as there dwell the descendants of Bharat. In Hindu scriptures, Bharatvarsha is identified as part of a larger geographical entity called Jambudweepa.

The naming of the country was debated by the drafting committee of the constitution. Before the Constitutional Assembly in 1949, the country was known as Bharat, India, and Hindustan. While a good number of the drafting committee members preferred the old name, Bharat, many others favoured India. That's what led to the Constituent Assembly choosing both the names.