Cities, towns, countries, and land features have been renamed for centuries and are in our closest political atmosphere. Renaming of places has shaped world politics, history, and lifestyle of people and acted as markers with the rise and fall of empires. When the British left India, hundreds of Anglicised names and European spellings got renamed to its native or a new one. When governments collapsed in the Soviet Union, Petrograd became Leningrad and finally St. Petersburg. On the departure of the Dutch from the New World, and the arrival of the English, New Amsterdam became New York. With the end of Belgian colonialism, Zaïre turned into the Democratic Republic of Congo, and almost all the Belgian names turned Bantu. And there are countless such examples that have shaped world history.
But what about water bodies? The major oceans, seas, bays, gulfs? Rivers that shape world geography, lakes, ponds, and even smaller tributaries and distributaries. Maritime warfare has seen umpteen number of name changes that took place around us and also contributed equally in giving world history a direction. And one of the key water body systems was the ones around the Indian subcontinent - Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, and Bay of Bengal. Connecting Arabia to India and to the various kingdoms and empires of Southeast Asia, these water bodies decided the fate of the world and are still the major game-changers. This post shall talk about the various names of these water bodies and how they systematically oriented world order.
The Arabian Sea
The sea touching Mumbai, Karachi, and Muscat has worn more names than almost any other body of water — each one a timestamp of who controlled it.
The oldest names came from the Indian interior. The Rigveda (~1500 BCE) called it Paraavat Samudra — "the farther sea, where the sun sets" — a directional name from the perspective of the Punjab heartland. By the Puranic era it had become Ratnakara, "the mine of gems," honouring the pearls, corals, and trade wealth that flowed from its depths. Tamil Sangam poets called it simply Kudakadal — the Western Sea.
The Persians were the first to map it formally. In 515 BCE, Achaemenid emperor Darius I sent a Greek sailor named Scylax of Caryanda (in today's Türkiye) down the Indus River and westward along the Arabian coast all the way to Suez — a thirty-month voyage. For Darius, the sea was Darya-e-Hind, the Sea of Hind. Hind was Persian for Sindhu, the Indus River. This single etymological chain — Sindhu → Hind → Indos → Indus → India — is what eventually gave the ocean its modern name too.
The Greeks collapsed the entire northwestern Indian Ocean — Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf — into one name: the Erythræan Sea, after a mythological Persian king called Erythras. Alexander's admiral Nearchus sailed it in 326 BCE after the Indian campaign. The anonymous Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (~50 CE) became the definitive Greco-Roman trading guide to its ports. Romans formalised it as Mare Erythræum.
Medieval Arab geographers, despite their sailors dominating these waters for centuries, couldn't agree on a name. Some called it Bahr-e-Fars (Persian Sea), inheriting Sassanid terminology. Others used Bahr-al-Hind (Sea of India), the Green Sea, or the Sea of Oman. Arab commercial dominance peaked under the Abbasid Caliphate (8th–13th centuries), with dhows reaching as far as China — yet no single Arab name ever became universal.
The Portuguese settled it. When Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut in 1498, he sailed a sea visibly run by Arab merchants at every port. Portuguese maps began calling it Mar Arabico. British geographical standardisation confirmed it in the 18th century, and the International Hydrographic Organization formalised the name in the 20th. "Arabian Sea" is ultimately a Portuguese-British cartographic decision — made not because Arabs discovered it, but because Arab traders were the most visible presence on it when Europeans arrived. A Vedic poet called it the sea of gems. A Persian emperor called it the sea of India. A Greek merchant called it the Red Sea. An Arab navigator couldn't decide. A Portuguese explorer named it after the people he kept meeting on its shores.
The Bay of Bengal
The sea that curves along India's eastern coast, touching Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and the shores of Myanmar and Sri Lanka, has always been understood differently — wilder, more monsoon-driven, and for much of history, the gateway to Southeast Asia.
The oldest Indian names were again directional. The Rigveda called it Purva Samudra — the Eastern Sea, where the sun rises — the mirror image of the Arabian Sea's western designation. The epics called it Mahodadhi, "the great vessel of water," the ocean Rama's armies gazed upon before crossing to Lanka. In Odisha and Andhra it was Kalinga Sagar, named after the powerful kingdom that dominated its western coast. Tamil Sangam poets called it Vangakadal or Vada Kadal — the Bengal Sea, or the Northern Sea.
The Sanskrit classical tradition also used Vangasagara — Sea of Vanga, the ancient kingdom of Bengal — reflecting how the bay's identity shifted depending on which coast you stood on. From the Tamil south it was the northern sea. From Bengal, it was the great eastern ocean.
Greeks and Romans named it with characteristic Ganges-centrism. Ptolemy (~150 CE) called it Sinus Gangeticus — the Gulf of the Ganges — because the Ganges was the most famous river of India and this was simply that river's gulf. Roman maps continued using the name for centuries after it had faded from use on the subcontinent itself.
The bay's most significant historical moment came under the Chola Empire. It was across this sea — their Vangakadal — that Rajendra Chola I launched his famous 1025 CE naval campaign, devastating the Srivijaya Empire in Sumatra. The Cholas understood this sea not as a boundary but as a highway.
European cartographers called it variously the Sea of Bengal or Gulf of Bengal, after the Bengal region defining its northwestern shore. The name "Bay of Bengal" consolidated in British colonial usage through the 18th century, driven by the importance of the Bengal Presidency as the centrepiece of British India. What that name obscures is that this was never one civilisation's sea — it was the Kalinga kingdom's trading coast, Rama's mythological horizon, the Chola navy's launching pad, the Buddhist missionary route to Southeast Asia, and a British administrative convenience, all layered over three thousand years.
The Indian Ocean
Of the three, the Indian Ocean has the most contested naming history — because its name has always been political.
The oldest Sanskrit name was Ratnakara — "the mine of gems" — used in the Puranas as a collective name for the great southern ocean. The epics used Mahodadhi for its expanse. The Vedic tradition generally conceived of it as the cosmic receptacle of all rivers rather than a navigable sea with fixed boundaries.
The Persians under Darius I called it Darya-e-Hind — the Sea of Hind — after their province Hinduš on the Indus. This is the name that, filtered through Greek as Oceanus Indicus, eventually became "Indian Ocean." Pliny the Elder (~77 CE) was apparently the first author to formally use Oceanus Indicus in his Natural History — one of the earliest documented uses of the "Indian" label on this ocean.
Ptolemy's maps (~150 CE) called it Mare Indicum and imagined it as a giant enclosed lake, with an unknown landmass connecting Africa and Asia to the south. This geographical misconception persisted on European maps for over a thousand years. Medieval Arab geographers called it Bahr al-Hind — the Sea of India — or the Sea of Zanj in its southern reaches near East Africa. Chinese navigators of the Tang and Song dynasties, and most famously Zheng He's fleet in the early 15th century, called it the Western Ocean — a reminder that geography is always relative to where you stand.
The Portuguese, arriving via the Cape of Good Hope in 1497–98 under Vasco da Gama, called it the Mar da India. The name "Indian Ocean" became standard through European cartographic convention during the 16th and 17th centuries and was formalised by the International Hydrographic Organization in the 20th century.
Arabian Sea — Historical Names |
Period | Name | Meaning |
~1500 BCE | Paraavat Samudra | Western sea, where the sun sets (Rigveda) |
~1500 BCE | Sindhu Sagar | Sea of the Indus River (Sanskrit) |
~400 BCE – 400 CE | Ratnakara | Mine of gems (Puranas) |
~515 BCE | Daryaye Hind | Sea of Hind (Achaemenid Persia) |
~300 BCE – 300 CE | Kudakadal | Western Sea (Tamil Sangam) |
~5th c. BCE – 18th c. CE | Erythræan Sea | Sea of King Erythras (Ancient Greek) |
~1st c. CE | Mare Erythræum | Erythraean Sea (Roman) |
~6th – 17th c. CE | Bahr-e-Fars | Sea of Persia (Sassanid / Medieval Arab) |
~7th – 14th c. CE | Bahr-al-Hind | Sea of India (Abbasid Caliphate) |
~15th c. CE | Mar Arabico | Arabian Sea (Portuguese) |
~18th c. CE – present | Arabian Sea | Named after Arab traders (British cartography) |
Bay of Bengal — Historical Names |
Period | Name | Meaning |
~1500 BCE | Purva Samudra | Eastern Sea, where the sun rises (Rigveda) |
~400 BCE – 400 CE | Mahodadhi | Great vessel of water (Sanskrit Epics) |
~300 BCE onwards | Kalinga Sagar | Sea of Kalinga (Odisha tradition) |
~300 BCE – 300 CE | Vangakadal | Sea of Vanga / Bengal (Tamil Sangam) |
~300 BCE – 300 CE | Vada Kadal | Northern Sea (Tamil Sangam) |
~300 BCE – 300 CE | Gangasagara | Sacred sea of the Ganga (Sanskrit) |
~150 CE | Sinus Gangeticus | Gulf of the Ganges (Ptolemy) |
~16th – 18th c. CE | Gulf of Bengal | Named after Bengal region (Portuguese / Dutch) |
~18th c. CE – present | Bay of Bengal | Named after Bengal Presidency (British) |
Indian Ocean — Historical Names |
Period | Name | Meaning |
~1500 BCE | Samudra | Assemblage of waters (Rigveda) |
~1500 BCE – 400 CE | Ratnakara | Mine of gems (Puranas) |
~515 BCE | Darya-e-Hind | Sea of Hind (Achaemenid Persia) |
~5th c. BCE | Erythræan Sea | Entire NW Indian Ocean zone (Ancient Greek) |
~77 CE | Oceanus Indicus | First formal use of Indian label (Pliny) |
~150 CE | Mare Indicum | Indian Sea (Ptolemy) |
~7th – 14th c. CE | Bahr al-Hind | Sea of India (Medieval Arab) |
~7th – 14th c. CE | Sea of Zanj | Named after East African coast (Arabic) |
~15th c. CE | Xi Yang | Western Ocean (Chinese — Zheng He era) |
~15th c. CE | Mar da India | Sea of India (Portuguese) |
~18th c. CE – present | Indian Ocean | Named after India, itself from Indus River (British) |
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