Names of Jerusalem

Names of Jerusalem refers to the multiple names by which the city of Jerusalem has been known and the etymology of the word in different languages. According to the Jewish Midrash, "Jerusalem has 70 names". Lists have been compiled of 72 different Hebrew names for Jerusalem in Jewish scripture. Today, Jerusalem is called Yerushalayim (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם) and Al-Quds (اَلْـقُـدْس). Yerushalayim is a derivation of a much older name, recorded as early as in the Middle Bronze Age, which has however been repeatedly re-interpreted in folk etymology, notably in Biblical Greek, where the first element of the name came to be associated with ἱερός (hieros, "holy"). The city is also known, especially among Muslims, as Bayt al-Maqdis (بَـيْـت الْـمَـقْـدِس), referring to the Temple in Jerusalem, called Beit HaMikdash in Hebrew. A city called Ꜣwšꜣmm in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 19th century BCE) and typically reconstructed as (U)Rušalim is usually identified as Jerusalem. Nadav Na'aman proposed that the name should instead by understood as r'š (head) + rmm (exalted), meaning 'the exalted head', and so not referring to Jerusalem, but Na'aman withdrew this objection in 2023. Jerusalem is called either Urusalim (URU ú-ru-sa-lim) or Urušalim (URU ú-ru-ša10-lim) in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba (1330s BCE). The Sumero-Akkadian name for Jerusalem, uru-salim, is variously etymologised to mean "foundation of [or: by] the god Shalim": from West Semitic yrw, ‘to found, to lay a cornerstone’, and Shalim, the Canaanite god of the setting sun and the nether world, as well as of health and perfection. Jerusalem is the name most commonly used in the Bible, and the name used by most of the Western World. The Biblical Hebrew form is Yerushalaim (), adopted in Biblical Greek as Hierousalēm, Ierousalēm (Ιερουσαλήμ), or Hierosolyma, Ierosolyma (Ιεροσόλυμα), and in early Christian Bibles as Syriac Ūrišlem (ܐܘܪܫܠܡ) as well as Latin Hierosolyma or Ierusalem. In Arabic, this name occurs in the form Ūrsālim (أْوْرْسَـالِـم) which is the Arabic name promoted by the Israeli government.