A group of historians believe that the the name Tennis originated from an Egyptian town on the Nile called Tinnis (in Arabic). Some other historians believe that the word came from Old French, via the Anglo-Norman term Tenez which means ‘hold, receive or take. Ancient and Medieval European literature has mentions of tennis in various pieces. In one of the best- known Aurtharian stories, we find Sir Gawain plays tennis against 17 giants on his way to kill the Green Knight. Poet John Grower in ‘Praise of Peace’ penned, “Of the tenetz to winne or lese a chase, Mai no lif wite er that the bal be ronne”. (Whether a chase is won or lost at tennis, nobody can know until the ball is run). Even William Shakespeare in Henry V mentioned ‘tennis balles’, when a basket of them is given to King Henry as a mockery of his youth and playfulness.
As the game became famous among Englishmen, Thomas Henry Gem and Juan Bautista Augurio Perera created a new set of rules by playing on the croquet lawn at Perera’s Edgbaston home in 1865. In 1872 both Gem and Perera moved to Leamington Spa in Warwickshire and there they established the world’s first lawn tennis club.
