Britannica
Sources used in this answer
Who coined the name Pakistan?
Created from Britannica articles
using AI.
AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
The name "Pakistan" was not coined by Muhammad Iqbal, though his 1930 presidential address to the All India Muslim League provided the foundational vision for a separate Muslim state in northwestern India.12
The task of naming this proposed country fell to Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a student at the University of Cambridge. In his 1933 pamphlet, Now or Never, Rahmat Ali and three colleagues coined the term as an acronym representing the regions of Punjab, Afghania (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, and Indus-Sindh, along with the suffix from Baluchistan.1