The palace is named after the town of Amber, named after the goddess Amba. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata, Amba is the eldest daughter of the king of Kashi, who considers the Kuru prince Bhishma responsible for her misfortune and her sole goal in life becomes his destruction, to fulfill which she is reborn as Shikhandi (the son of Drupada, the father of Draupadi).Feminist writer Githa Hariharan tells the story of Amba in The Thousand Faces of Night. Her undaunted courage and dedicated approach to do penance seeking revenge against Bhishma got Amba the epithet "incarnation of penance". Amba is a commonly used word in Sanskrit meaning mother.