Etymology
The origin of the city's name is steeped in Hindu mythology. Legend has it that Gurgaon village located into the heart of gurgaon city is the ancestral village of Guru Dronacharya (or Drona), the teacher of martial arts to the Pandavas and Kauravas princes in the Indian epic of the Mahabharata.
In Sanskrit, Guru means teacher, which in this case refers to Dronacharya and both Gram and Gaon mean village. According to Hindu mythology, the village was gifted by the Pandavas and Kauravas - specifically, by King Dhritarashtra of Hastinapur - to Dronacharya, the son of Rishi Bharadwaja, and was therefore known as guru-gram. Over time the colloquial term gaon (which also means village in Prakrit) was substituted for gram and the term Gurgaon emerged.
The 'Dronacharya Well' still exists within the Gurgaon city, along with a village called Gurgaon. (see Drona).
Read more about this topic: Gurgaon
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)