From the sacred place name Jerusalem, traditionally interpreted as city of peace.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest and most charged place names in human history, and its occasional use as a given name carries all of that immense weight. The Hebrew *Yerushalayim* (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם) is linguistically debated: the most common interpretation combines *yeru* (foundation or city) with *shalem* — a Canaanite deity associated with the setting sun and completion, cognate with the Hebrew word for peace, *shalom*. The name thus means something close to *foundation of peace* or *city of wholeness* — a profound aspiration for a city that has, across three millennia, been conquered and rebuilt more than any other on earth.
Sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Jerusalem appears throughout the Torah, the New Testament, and the Quran. In William Blake's prophetic epic *Jerusalem* (1804–1820), the city becomes a symbol of spiritual freedom and the divine imagination — Blake's Jerusalem is both a physical place and a state of liberated humanity. The Anglican hymn *Jerusalem*, set to Hubert Parry's music in 1916, turned Blake's verses into an unofficial anthem of English spiritual longing.
As a given name, Jerusalem has been used primarily in deeply religious communities — among Ethiopian Christians, in West African nations where Old Testament names are honored, and in some African American families for whom biblical naming carries profound cultural and spiritual meaning. It is not a name chosen lightly: to name a child Jerusalem is to invoke history, faith, and an entire civilization's longing for a sacred center.