In ancient times, the first Greek visitors to Egypt were surprised to see an animal that resembled the krokodilos-one of the small lizards found in Greece. They did not realize that this was a different animal altogether, and so they called it krokodilus too. The word ‘crocodile’ is derived from this Greek word.
The gharial is a crocodile found commonly in India and Nepal. It gets its name from the Sanskrit word for alligators- ‘ghantika’. It is also believed that the name is derived from the word ‘ghara’ which means ‘pot’ in Hindi, and that it refers to a swelling around the nostrils of mature male crocodiles.