Tharoor

Tharoor is the family name of a prominent Nair Tharavadu of Kerala, India. The name dates to antiquity, and historians record that the kingdom in and around the modern-day district of Palakkad was called Tharoor Swarupam in the 14th and 15th centuries. The family appears to have lost kingly authority thereafter, before the attacks in the area by Tipu Sultan of Mysore, and well before the absorption of the territory by the British into the Madras Presidency in the early 19th century. For at least three hundred years the Tharoor Tharavadu has been centered in the village of Chittilanchery. (There is no confirmed connection between the present-day Tharoors of Chittilanchery and the village of Tharoor, also in Palakkad district).