The city's name is first written down in Hittite hieroglyphs. Inscriptions of the Late Hittite period, between 1170 and 710 BC, found at the Andaval church in the village of Aktaş near Niğde, give it as Nahita — a name said to come from Anahita, the moon and fertility goddess of the peoples of Anatolia before the Hittites.
Every later ruler reshaped it. Under the Medes and Persians it was Nahida, in the Greek period Nikita, under Byzantium Nahida, Negide or Nekite, under the Seljuks Nakita, Nikide, Nigide, Nekide or Nikte, and under the Ottomans Nikde or Nigde. It took its present spelling after the adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928.
The history behind those names goes back to the Palaeolithic. The Hittites settled the region from the third millennium BC; when their state collapsed in the 12th century BC the Late Hittite states took its place, and between 710 and 620 BC those city states came under Assyrian rule. After Assyria fell the district spent a period under the kingdom of Cilicia, between 612 and 590 BC.
