The name Singapore was derived from Malay words singa (lion) and pura (city), which in turn derived from the Sanskrit simha and pura.Folklore attributes this name to a 14th-century Sumatran prince Sang Nila Utama, who, on alighting the island after a thunderstorm, renamed it Lion City after spotting an auspicious beast identified as a lion.
The first records of Singapore’s inhabitance are from 3rd-century AD. The island was an outpost of the Sumatran Srivijaya empire and originally bore the Javanese name Temasek (‘sea town’). Temasek (Tumasek) rapidly become a significant trading city, but declined in the late 14th century. There are few remnants of old Temasek in Singapore, but archaeologists in Singapore have uncovered evidence of the civilization and other settlements. Between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Singapore was part of the Sultanate of Johore. During the Malay — Portugal wars in 1613, she was set ablaze by Portuguese troops. The Portuguese subsequently held control in the 16th century, the Dutch in the 17th, but most of this time the island was occupied by mainly fishermen and occasional pirates.
In 1819, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed on the main island. Seeing its potential, Raffles signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah on behalf of the British East India Company to develop Singapore as a trading post and settlement, marking the start of her modern era. Raffles’s deputy, William Farquhar, oversaw a period of growth and ethnic migration. The British India office governed the island in 1858, but Singapore was made a British crown colony, answerable directly to the Crown, in 1867. By 1869, the island boasted a sizeable community of 100,000.
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