The vast majority of these, with a few exceptions like Kandhar, Singapore Caspian Sea are completely bogus and spring from the fertile imagination of people like P.N. Oak.

To illustrate Rome was named after its founder Romulus, Assyria was named after the goddess Ashur, France after the Franks a Germanic tribe, Milan from the latin Mediolanum, Rhodesia was named after the Englishman Cecil Rhodes, the list goes on.

As Walter Clark said: “… by popular but antiquated discussions in the pursuit of will-o’-the-wisps of etymologies. Anything can be proved by the judicious use of etymologies and the fortuitous resemblances of words from different languages.”

This text is an embarrassment and should never have seen the light of day on Dandavatas.

Dasa dasa anu dasa

Shyamasundara Dasa

www.Shyamasundaradasa.com

krsne matirastu

Reference:
The Sandalwood and Peacocks of Ophir by Walter Eugene Clark from The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Jan.,1920), pp. 103-119 Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Hare Krishna!
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada! All glories to Sri Guru and Gauranga!

There was Russian scientist Lomonosov (1711-1765) who argued - when german so called scientists had agenda to undermine russian culture with arguments - that best elements of russian culture and russian names came from “advanced” western culture and german language. Lomonosov answered - So, that means that russian BARAN (ram) came from german BARON…

About 2 decades ago, I have personal discussions with HG Gopiparanadhana prabhu - about tendency to show and prove different linguistic connections between vedic and local cultures in historical aspect. And HG Gopiparanadhana prabhu said strictly - “… even do not try to prove something what is not scientifically approvable”. So - May be there are connections, but may be not. Let it be. But if you will start to prove - and this will be false - you will lose any credibility.

Therefore - dear Premanjana prabhu, and dear Editors of Dandavats - do not lose credibility. If you will put just one word - similarities, or theory, or idea of origin - in the name of article, instead of just - ORIGIN - then it will be discutable, But now - it is like it is - EMBARASSMENT.

The real connections of words should be analised in complexes of cultural elements. For example - latvian dainas:

sayAyuSi bramanISi zila kalna galiNA
sakAruSi zobentiNus svEta koka zariNA

There are 3 cultural elements:
bramanISi and zobentiNi - brahmanas with swords
zilais kalns - blue mountain
svEts koks - holy tree

This daina is preChristian time (before - 10 century). Brahmanas with swords - its fenomenon in connection with paraSurAMa lineage (one can not find such element somewhere else in history of culture out of the story of paraSurAma - brahmanas with swords), and elements of worship - holy mountains and holy trees - they also are vedic by epitets (but not only vedic - other nonvedic cultures had such elements).

Therefore one can make claim - that this word - bramanISi is the same as brahmanas from sanskrit. This is just one example. But this is not PROOF.

ys
Nataraja dasa

I fully agree with Shyamasundara prabhu’s comments. The territory known as “Greater India” is defined as “historical extent of the culture of India beyond the Indian subcontinent”, which is from present-day Afghanistan, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Indo-China, the Philippines and Indonesia. Any place-name outside of that region resembling Sanskrit names is probably coincidental. However, so many European words are too similar to Sanskrit to be a coincidence. For example mother(English) - mata (Sanskrit); pater (Latin) - pita; divine (English) - deva; mankind (Eng.) - manukula; three (English) - tra. And those are words just off of the top of my head.