What India has to do with Indian openings?

Title describes my question perfectly. Why certain openings are called Indian openings? I mean what is their connection with India?

goes back to Indian players in 1884.

i used to think of the fianchettoed bishop as being like an American Indian hiding with a bow and arrow, an interpretation i've always preferred myself.

Ya but how come so many openings are called Indian.. for example.. we have only one French opening or one English opening..

Indian Brahmins who played chesss used to fianchetto.

However in ancient times,king before getting checked were allowed to make 1 move with knight capabilities and castling was not allowed.

so g6 , g3 was very common

That is because the First move of these openings is Nf6.

fiancée toto? 

I'm guessing the spellcheck gremlins got at that one. Fianchetto is Italian and pronounced "fyanketto", more or less.

Indian chess's other unusual rule was on pawn promotion: a pawn promoted to a piece according to the file of its promotion square, so a Rook on the Rook's file, etc; a Queen on either of the centre files.

there are actually 2 stories about it, one because the moves remind one of the indian game and another is a german story. According  to that one, the grandmaster of the day found the opening so strange that they called it indian.

Does this imply that they thought India was strange?

Let's see how many Indian defenses there are.

Scamming and cheapness are the only ones i can think of (edit: joke). Oh wait, we are talking about chess. (I am an indian btw)

Bogo, Nimzo, Queen's, King's directly have indian in them

and other openings branch off 1..nf6 which are still technically classified as indian defenses.

That's the story I heard too. The used the term "Indian" to mean "new", or "novel" I believe, i.e. not run-of-the-mill, as opposed to "strange"

The story I was told is that Nimzowitch or Tarrasch developed some openings with it (Nimzo-indian is a great example). The idea was against the classical way to putting pawns in the centre, the idea was to attack the centre with the pieces, and say: ¨Hey, your pawns in the centre are weaknesses, and I have none in the centre, so you have a problem!¨

The idea was so strange and exotic that it was named Indian, because in 1920 India was strange and exotic.

"Exotic"! That's the word I was looking for!

Scamming and Cheapness?Be careful with what you say.

lol, well a lot of "us" are pretty cheap if you ask me.

Regardless of what you think,you are offending people.Intentionally or Unintentionally,idk and idc.So,please stop these derogatory comments and let's focus on the chess,shall we?

I heard a different story.

When chess was first invented in India, pawns were only allowed to move one square.

When the hypermodernists started introducing their new openings, the joke went that they had never gotten the memo that pawns are now allowed to move 2 squares. Nobody told them.

okay fine , i was trying to be a little funny, didnt mean to be offensive..

anyways those are the 4 main defenses.

if there are anymore, mention them.

The name is derived from the fact that the games played in India does not have the initial double pawn move. In these openings up to some moves the double pawn move is not used (they are originated in India). like nimzonindian and other Indian defenses. - Rueben Fine in his book "the Ideas behind chess openings"

Nah, there's more than 1 named after the English:

English Opening - 1.c4

English Defense - 1.d4 e6 2.c4 b6 or 1.c4 b6

English Attack - Various Sicilians, usually featuring a White Bishop on e3 with pawn advances to f3 and g4.

The French have the French Defense (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5), and the Paris Gambit (1.g3 e5 2.Nh3 d5 3.f4)

Also, you can refer to the Symmetrical English and King's English (what some sites refer to the Reverse Sicilian as, 1.c4 e5) the same way you say "Queen's Indian" and "King's Indian".

So it's no different, really.

I can't be the only one thinking this, right?

---

And to be on-topic myself, to my knowledge most openings (if not all?) are named by their historical background. As said in earlier replies by others, Indians played a lot 'Indian Defence' in the past.