Penrith is a suburb and major centre in the metropolitan area of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located in Greater Western Sydney 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of the Sydney central business district on the banks of the Nepean River. Its elevation is 25 m. Penrith is the administrative seat of the local government area of the City of Penrith. It is also acknowledged on the register of the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales as one of only four cities within the Sydney metropolitan area.

Penrith was named after the town of Penrith in Cumbria, England. The name is of Cumbric origin, a Celtic language of northern Britain related to Welsh. 'Pen' is Cumbric and Welsh for 'Head' or 'Chief' and the Cumbric 'Rid' (Rhydd in Welsh) means 'Ford' giving the name 'Chief Ford' or 'Hill Ford'. How it got the name is unclear. One theory is that in the early days, development in Penrith was entirely on one road, like the English Penrith, and someone familiar with both spotted the similarity and suggested the name. The earliest known written reference to the name Penrith dates back to 1819.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Penrith area was home to the Mulgoa tribe of the Darug people. They lived in makeshift huts called gunyahs, hunted native animals such as kangaroos, fished in the Nepean River, and gathered local fruits and vegetables such as yams. They lived under an elaborate system of Law which had its origins in the Dreamtime. Most of the Mulgoa were killed by smallpox or galgala shortly after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. Early British explorers such as Watkin Tench described them as friendly, saying, "they bade us adieu, in unabated friendship and good humour".

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