Jurong is probably derived from the Malay word jerung, which means a "shark". The first road in the area, Jurong Road was cut around 1852-1853, during the time of John Thomson's tenure as Chief Surveyor. In the early 1900s, Jurong was uncharted territory, mainly dominated byswamps with low hills covered by shrubs and a thick jungle. In 1929, Jurong Road was extended to Bukit Timah, connecting it to the rest of Singapore Town. Jurong remained a sleepy rural area until 1959, when Singapore became a self-governing colony. Till then, Jurong was dominated with rural villages. In 1963, the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, made Jurong the initial constituency on his first visit to constituencies in the Republic. At that time, Jurong was without a citizen's consultative committee.
Many roads within the Jurong Industrial Estate named in the late 1960s and early 1970s drew inspiration from the nature of industrialactivities in the estate and related aspects of industrialisation. For the local Chinese population, Jurong was formerly called peng kang, a reference to a gambier plantation located in the area. After 1906, rubber plantations dominated the area — Bulim Estate, Lokyang Estate, Chong Keng Estate, Seng Toh Estate and Yunnan Estate, giving rise to many of the local names for areas in Jurong
