According to the Jewish bible, “Jerusalem has 70 names” – and there is an actual list with 72 different Hebrew names for Jerusalem in Jewish scripture – but today, the city of Jerusalem is mainly referred to as Yerushalayim (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם) and Al-Quds (Arabic: اَلْـقُـدْس). So how did Jerusalem get its name?
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 Greek: ἱερός (hieros, “holy”).
But how did we get from there to the modern name of “Jerusalem”? Fasten your seatbelts, we are going on a ride.
How Did Jerusalem Get Its Name?
Based on the archaeological evidence found so far, Jerusalem was founded about 6,000 years ago, and may have roughly that same name since its beginning. A city named “Rushalimum” is mentioned as an enemy of the pharaoh in an ancient Egyptian list, dating back to the 19th century BCE (4,700 years ago). If it is indeed Jerusalem, it is the earliest reference of it.
The first sure reference to the city is in the Amarna Letters, an archive written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan which is dated to about 2,700 years ago. In those letters, Jerusalem is referred to by the name “Ursalim”.
But what does the name mean? “Ursalim” is most likely a compound of two words in Western Semitic (a prehistoric language that would later birth Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopic, and more): the verb yaru (“to establish”) and the name Shalim (or Salem), one of the Canaanite gods.
If accurate, then the name “Ursalim” (and Yerushayalim) would have meant “Shalim’s city” or “Established by Shalim,” indicating that Shalim was the original tutelary deity of the city. Remnants of a Canaanite town called Salem date back to the early bronze age, and the first Biblical mentioning of this place is in Genesis 14:18, where Abraham and Melchizedek meet.
Jerusalem in Hebrew
The name Jerusalem first occurs in Joshua 10:1 where it is told that the city of Jerusalem is conquered, sacked, and abandoned by Israel (Judges 1:8). Four hundred years later David conquered Jerusalem again, annexed it, and made it his capital (2 Samuel 5:6). By the time the Hebrews had a say in it, the name Jerusalem had been long established.
Why did they not remamed the city? The reason is probably that the name was easily translated into something very striking in Hebrew. Without a doubt, the second and dominant part of the name reminded (then and now) of the word “shalom”, which means “peace”. The root of this word, “Shalem”, denotes completeness, wholeness, and soundness.
The first part of the name Jerusalem may likely have reminded a Hebrew audience of the verb yara – meaning to throw, cast or shoot. This verb is used when arrows are shot, stones are thrown or stacked, and even when lots are cast. The verb and its nouns have to do with many little impulses that cause a larger and unified event or service to obtain a larger and unified objective. Perhaps the name Jerusalem was never changed, but only localized to Hebrew, because it seems to mean “Reign Of Peace.”
The Hebrew Name – Yerushalayim
Another potential origin of the name comes from the bible. When Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, he went to the temple mount to do so. He named that place “God will see,” as it is said to this day, “On the mountain, God will be seen” (Genesis 22:14.). The Hebrew word for “will see” is yireh. That’s the first half.
What was Jerusalem called before Abraham renamed it to Yireh? To discover this, we need to backtrack a few chapters. After rescuing his relative, Lot, from captivity, we read how Abraham was greeted by “Melchizedek the king of Shalem,” who greeted him with bread and wine. the Jewish tradition believes that Melchizedek is Shem, son of Noah and that Shalem was none other than the very place that Abraham would eventually rename to Yireh. So Shalem is the second half: Yireh + Shalem = Yerushalayim.
So how did Shalem and Yireh get together to become Yerushalayim?
The Midrash gives us a beautiful glimpse into the process of thinking:
Said the Holy One, blessed be He, “If I call the place Yireh like Abraham did, the righteous Shem will complain. However, if I refer to it as Shalem, the righteous Abraham will complain. Rather, I will call it Yerushalayim, and that name will contain the way it was called by both of them: Yireh Shalem.”
Other Names in the Bible
While the Bible usually calls the city “Jerusalem,” it is also using other names, including “The City of Jebus” (Judges 19:10) after the Jebusites, who lived in the city before King David allegedly purchased it from their king and made it his capital. This led to another name, “City of David” (e.g., 2 Samuel 5:6).
And there were more: the Temple Mount is called Zion (e.g., 1 Kings 8:1) and Moriah (e.g., Genesis 22:2), both of which came to apply by extension to the city itself. More rarely the names Shalem (Psalms 76:2), Neve Tzedek (Jeremiah 31:22), and “City of the Great King” (Psalms 48:2) are also used.
The English Name “Jerusalem”
Meanwhile, over in Europe, the Greek name of the city -” Ierousal” – entered Latin as “Hierosolyma”. That morphed into the Late Latin name “Hierusalem”, which in turn became Old French “Ierusalem”.
As French developed from Latin, the language experienced a sound shift. Words starting with the letter “i” started being pronounced with a soft g (like in the word gym). In 1066, the Norman Conquest brought this pronunciation to England, in words that came from French and Latin, resulting in dual use of the letter i. In words of Germanic origin (such as an island) the letter was pronounced as long i, while in words originating from Latin and French, it was pronounced as j, though none of these languages had the letter j yet. So from this point (roughly the 12th century), Jerusalem was pronounced “Jerusalem” but spelled “Ierusalem.”
In the 17th century, the newly invented letter j came over from the continent and “Jerusalem” finally began to be spelled in its modern form.
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