Top Interesting facts about Chennai

Chennai, the first city of Modern India in Tamil Nadu completes 375 years on August 22nd. The occasion is celebrated annually as Madras Day. On this occasion, we present some interesting facts and trivia on the South Indian city...

Origin

On 22 August 1639, the British East India Company under Francis Day bought a small strip of land stretching 3 miles on the Coromandel Coast. They got a license to build a fort and a castle in the contracted region.

The ruler Damarla Chennappa Nayakudu, the Nayaka of Vandavasi, granted the British permission to build a factory and warehouse for their trading enterprises. The region was then primarily a fishing village known as "Madraspatnam".

A year later, the British built Fort St. George, the first major British settlement in India, which became the nucleus of the growing colonial city.

• Chennai  has the distinction of being the first British settlement.

• The Fort Museum inside the premises of Fort St. George, managed by the Archaeological Survey of India enjoys the pride of having in its possession, the first tricolor hoisted after the Indian independence. 

• Chennai is the first city in India to have implemented the Conditional Access System for cable television.

• Chennai was the first Indian city to have the WI-FI facility in a widespread manner.

• Chennai is home to the first European-style banking system in India with the establishment of the 'Madras Bank' on 21 June 1683, almost a century before the establishment of the first commercial banks, such as the Bank of Hindustan and the General Bank of India, which were established in 1770 and 1786, respectively. 

• The Spectator, founded in 1836, was the first English newspaper in Chennai to be owned by an Indian and became the city's first daily newspaper in 1853.

How Chennai got its name

Different aspects explain the origin of the name Chennai/Chennapattanam:

1. First theory explains the name that it was from the Telugu ruler Damarla Chennappa Nayakudu, Nayaka of Chandragiri and Vandavasi, father of Damarla Venkatadri Nayakudu, from whom the English acquired the town in 1639.

2. The second theory states it was named after the Chenna Kesava Perumal Temple; the word chenni in Tamil means face, with the temple regarded as the face of the city.

3. Historian J B Prashant More has stated that the origin of the name "Chennai" is Telugu and not Tamil.

Chennai is the second oldest corporation in the world after London. It was started in 1687

Other facts

Chennai is the only city in South Asia and India to figure in the "52 places to go around the world" by The New York Times.

It is also the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the country and 31st largest urban area in the world.

The city is host to the third largest expatriate population in India after Mumbai and Delhi, with 35,000 in 2009 and steadily climbing to 82,790 in 2011.