Names for 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 (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם) in Hebrew. This 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 hieros "holy". The most common names in Arabic are Al-Quds (القدس) and Bayt Al-Maqdis (بيت المقدس), meaning "The Holy [City/Home]".

A city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 19th century BCE) is sometimes identified as Jerusalem although this has been challenged.

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). Also in the Amarna letters, it is called Beth-Shalem, the house of Shalem.

The Sumero-Akkadian name for Jerusalem, uru-salim, is variously etymologised to mean "foundation of [or: by] the god Shalim": from Hebrew/Semitic yry, ‘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 (ירושלם), 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 (أورسالم).

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