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Re: Want to know the meaning of my name
Though common in both North and South India (with different orthography in the latin script: Neetu versus Neethu), I remember hearing it in my childhood as a nickname or pet form of names like Anita (or Anitha), so its `meaning' depends on what it was the pet form of. Anita, for example, could be identical to the European pet form of Anna, which is ultimately from Hebrew Channah meaning (God's) favour.I do not know if there are other origins of the same name, and I haven't tried to figure out all names neetu can be a pet form of.
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I found on the internet:India is derived from Indus(hindu in Persian)
The name appeared in the writings of ancient Greek and Latin authors (Herodot, Strabo, Tacitus and others). The arabs borrowed their name for India (Hind) from the Greekssource:http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:dJTWwfEBFCEJ:answers.yahoo.com/question/index%3Fqid%3D20060723023425AAERQ1y+neethu,+wikipedia&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=3
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Off topicBut you are correct: Sanskrit sindhu probably literally meaning a moving body (of water) was transformed to Hindu in Persian and 'Indu- in Greek, and variously give us the names of the river Indus, the country India, the religion Hinduism, and the language Hindi. References to India occur in Greek writings (and Alexander came all the way to its borders), an Indian system of medicine is called Yunani (from Ionian), and so forth, but these are not the oldest contacts with India: Indians were already trading with the Sumerians some millenium and a half before Alexander (though, of course, they were not called Indians then).
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