Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 September 27

= September 27 =

India's name before Bharata
Being an Indian, my mom always used to tell me that our country's name 'Bharat' was derived from the name of a great emperor, Bharata. He was the son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala. As I grew up, I never thought of it much, but today, as I was searching about Shakuntala Devi (also known as human computer) for a school project, I accidentally came across Shakuntala (Bharata's mom). I, then recalled what my mom told me about Bharata, and a new question aroused in my mind. "What was India's name before Bharat?" I started thinking, and being a deep thinker, I could hardly concentrate on my studies. I kept my books aside and started surfing google, searching for an answer, but couldn't find one. Everywhere, I'm getting the same answer: India's name was Bharat and she has an alternate name, 'Hindustan': which is not satisfying.

If our country's name 'Bharat' was derived from the king Bharata, then what was its name before king Bharata? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaetae (talk • contribs) 17:22, 27 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Have you read the information at Hindustan?  Dbfirs  17:28, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Reading the various related articles I get the idea that, prior to Bharat, there WAS NO single name for the entire country... just names for the many small principalities and kingdoms. Bharat was the first to bring these together into an empire, so the entire land was named after him. Or something like that. Blueboar (talk) 17:55, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Does Names for India have the information you are looking for?--William Thweatt TalkContribs 19:34, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Dalí's language
Was Salvador Dalí's native (or most-used) language Catalan or Castilian? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:55, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Catalan, per: -- His parents were "stout defenders of the Catalan language." —  See also: "Though Dalí spoke Catalan at home and was also learning Spanish, French was to become the language that he used as an artist."  —107.15.157.44 (talk) 01:05, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --Lazar Taxon (talk) 04:00, 28 September 2018 (UTC)