Why does the name Indonesia contain the Greek word Nesia meaning islands?

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Why does the name Indonesia contain the Greek word Nesia meaning islands?



Indonesia is an archipelago country, located between Asia and Australia, and between the Indian and the Pacific Ocean.

The name derives from the Greek name of the Indos (Ἰνδός) and the word nesos (νῆσος), meaning "Indian islands".

In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians for the Malay Archipelago, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago.

After 1900, Indonesia became more common in academic circles outside the Netherlands, and native nationalist groups adopted it for political expression‎‎. The name was later used as the new country’s name. Other islands and regions in the Indo-Pacific also have “nesia” in their name; Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia.