They put quite a lot of though into it, and so did the Greeks. They thought that the origins of words could shed light (sometime divine light) on meaning, and they used etymology to tell stories and offer moral guidance.

The problem is that many classical (and later) scholars, historians and poets were prone to uncritically repeating stories without doing any fact checking, or just making stuff up to fit the narrative. The same is true for their etymologies.

Socrates and Plutarch in particular have reputations for their imaginative etymologies.