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Hewlêr
Erbil (Kurdish name)
The story of the name
Hewlêr — one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; the name appears in Sumerian cuneiform tablets as Urbilum. As a name it puts a city older than four millennia into a word — the citadel on the hill still glows.
Etymology
Root: Hewlêr · Toponym
Hewlêr is the Kurdish name of the city now also called Erbil — one of the longest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with cuneiform attestations as Urbilum and Arba-ʾIlu (‘four gods’) from the third millennium BCE. The Kurmancî form descends through Aramaic-mediated stages.
Name family
- Amed · cognate — parallel city-name kept in Kurdish
Updated: 2026-05-02