What we call karate today may have begun in ancient India almost two thousand years ago.  Many people believe that Buddhist monks in China, to protect themselves against bandits, practiced karate.  One Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, travelled from India to China around the year AD 520.  He settled at the Shaolin Monastery in China and taught Zen Buddhism to the monks there.  He taught his fighting art to them as well.  In time, the monks at Shaolin Monastery became strong fighters.
Over the next few centuries, karate spread throughout China and was practiced by many people.  A number of different karate-like styles developed during time, and karate became well known.  In China, people who practised karate called it kung fu.
The Chinese did a lot of trading with the Okinawan people, whose island home is only a few hundred miles off the coast of Southern China.  In time, the people of Okinawa learned some fighting techniques from the Chinese and combined them with their own fighting system.  Since the Okinawans were ruled by the Japanese and not allowed to have weapons, they practised karate to protect themselves.  The development of karate continued on Okinawa until 1900.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, they started teaching karate in schools.
Okinawa had many famous Karate Masters.  Perhaps the best known today is Gichin Funakoshi.  Master Funakoshi was a school teacher.  He travelled to Japan in 1922 and gave a demonstration of Okinawan Karate at a national sport show.  After that, he was asked to stay in Japan to teach karate.  He never gave his style an official name; he just called it “karate”, which means “empty hand” or fighting without weapons.  His students named it “Shotokan”, and so had a new name in Japan.