Çankırı lies in Paphlagonia, the region that sat between Bithynia to the west and Pontos to the east. Its ancient name was Gangra and it has kept it, in one form or another, to the present day. The name is first documented in the Greek and Roman periods, and the oldest written source to mention it is Eratosthenes, the many-sided scholar of the 3rd century BC.
Gangra is a local Anatolian name reaching back from the classical period to the Luwian era. The modern form came about by folk etymology — the way people give a meaning in their own language to a name they cannot understand — with the ancient Luwian Gangra reshaped using the words çan, bell, and kırık, broken. Under the Ottomans the ancient name held on, used as Kangırı or Kângarı.
