Origin Of Kuwait Name
Kuwait, officially the State of Kuwait or 'Dawlat al Kuwayt' was referred to by the name "Qurain" (or Grane) in the early seventeenth century. The names "Qurain" or Kuwait are diminutive of the Arabic words Qarn and Kout meaning "fortress built near water." Qarn is a high hill and Kout is a fortress. In the dialect of southern Iraq and the neighboring countries, Kout means a house built in the form of a fortress adjacent to water. The plural of Kout is Akwat, as used by the Arabian Peninsula's historians when they referred to a number of castles in towns with forts and walls.

The name Kuwait appeared around the middle of the XII th Century during the Hegira. It is an abbreviation, which means “the invincible citadel”, but it was also known under another name “Al-Qurain” which appears in shipping registers and was used by the Portuguese, Dutch and English travellers. Al-Qurain is an abbreviation for “the hill” or “elevated land”.

In the 17th century the Bani Khalid were the overlords of Eastern Arabia and their domain stretched from Kuwait down to Qatar. Some historians believe that in about 1672, Barrak bin Ghurair, the Emir of the Bani Khalid, built his Kut ( a small house in the shape of a fortress situated near water ) in Qarane, a small fishing community and that since then the city has been mostly referred to by the name "Kuwait". This may have been in the area in Kuwait City known today as Wattiya. This agrees with the local traditional story that Sheikh Barrak Iban Ghurair Al-Hamid, who ruled the Bani Khalid tribe from 1669 to 1682, built Kuwait before the beginning of the eighteenth century (AD)/the twelfth century (AH).

The Danish traveller C. Neibuhr depicted Kuwait as Grane on his map and in the narrative about his voyage made in 1765. Kuwait was known by the name Grane under the rule of Sheikh Abdallah Bin Sabah, the second ruler of Kuwait (1762-1812). Several places in southern Kuwait still bear the name Grane (Qurain).