What's in a name?

(Correction: I just noticed that I flipped the directions of things in my last blog post - it has now been corrected. Israel is west of Jordan! The editor apologizes for any inconvenience or chin scratching this may have provoked.)

So, what's in a name? Often quite a lot. And, in a part of the world where many different peoples have walked and settled on the land over many years, even more.  In Israel (where the state territory (borders fuzzy as they are) was most recently part of Mandatory Palestine), many places have two names, one Hebrew and the other Arabic -- towns, neighbourhoods, and streets. Sometimes you really need to know both names if you hope to find what you are looking for.

Almost all signs in Israel are trilingual -- Hebrew, Arabic, and English -- a rule I wish extended to the grocery store!

In Jerusalem (Yerushalayim (Hebrew) or Al Quds (Arabic)) the three neighbourhoods next to where I live are known by their Arabic names.  On the sign below you can easily see this -- in all three languages the two names are given. It's easiest for those of you literate only in English (like me) to see this in the Latin script with brackets. The one in brackets is the Arabic name.

Wayfinding in three languages in Jerusalem

If you use the Hebrew name Ge'ulim for the neighbourhood Bak'a you're likely to get blank stares. You may think that's because your Hebrew is poor, but really, it's because no one uses the Hebrew name.  Nobody calls Bak'a anything else but Bak'a, same for Katamon, and for Talbiya. (Of course, this is not the only place in the world where the "recommended" name is slow to catch on.)

But, there are other places in the city where there is no de facto consensus on the name in use. For example, on the east side of the city, if you were looking for the Jerusalem Hotel you might get directions from Damascus Gate  (at the old City) to walk up the Nablus Road (a main shopping street).  But, your map might have Sha'ar Shkhem or Bab al-Amud at the foot of Derech Shekhem that you walk up to get to the hotel.

Even when the street usually only goes by one name, the English spelling can be different enough to throw you off the trail. After all, transliteration is pretty subjective. So for example, I wanted to go to the Educational Bookstore. On its website the address is  19 Salah Eddin Street, but I couldn't find Salah Eddin anywhere on Google on my map, in my guidebook. But I did find Salah ad Din, it's one street east of Nablus Road. The obvious way to approach this problem is to sound out the name and look for anything that seems to phonetically approach it...next time!

Fun fact: Salah ad Din was a Kurdish Muslim who, among other major military successes, in 1187 captured Palestine from the Egyptians (who had booted the Crusaders out some 80 years earlier).