Hindi got its name from the Persian word Hind, meaning ‘land of the Indus River’. Persian speaking Turks who invaded Punjab and Gangetic plains in the early 11th century named the language of the region Hindi, ‘language of the land of the Indus River’.
Nearly 425 million people speak Hindi as first language and around 120 million as a second language.
Hindi is one of the languages spoken in India. It’s the official language of India, English being the other official language. There are several regional languages in India, such as Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Assamese, but Hindi is used by the largest number of people as their first language.
Hindi is the main language of Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and the capital Delhi in North India; Bihar and Jharkhand in Eastern India; Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in Central India and Rajasthan in West India. It’s widely understood in several other states of India.
Hindi is also spoken in some countries outside India, such as in Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and Nepal.