Where the Patel name comes from

Patel was a title before it was a surname. It comes from the Gujarati patel, a village headman, and behind that the Prakrit pattaïlla and the Sanskrit pattakila, a tenant of royal land, a term first attested in the Vetalapanchavimshatika. The name belongs above all to Gujarat, where it marked the community of land-owning farmers and later, under the East India Company, businessmen, agriculturalists and merchants. Patil is the same word again, kept in Marathi rather than Gujarati.