The word bungalow was borrowed in the late seventeenth century, when it was spelled Bungale. Later attestations have included bungala, bungelow, bungilo, bungallow, and bungalo, with the modern form becoming standardized in the early 1800s. The reason for these early variations is that it's a transliteration of the Hindi word bangli, which was their name for the Bengali people, since the house style originated from the country. We're not exactly sure where that demonym comes from, but it might be after Banga, a founding chief. In Bangladesh itself, the people call the building a banglaghar, and it's pretty much something along those lines everywhere else, too. According to Google Ngrams, literary usage of bungalow peaked in 1922, and according to Google Trends, searches for the term spike every year in mid-summer.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. This year, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government and Linguistics. There, I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote a thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy, magna cum laude. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy philosophy, trivia, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law.
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