Philadelphia

Quite recently, I had occasion to check whether Philadelphia was named after some biblically important place in the near east, or whether the name had been invented by earnest founding fathers with a classical education. At that time, my recollection is that I failed to get to the bottom of it and failed to find any near eastern connection. Perhaps I was just unsatisfied with, unconvinced by the line in Wikipedia that 'Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for "brotherly love", derived from the Ancient Greek terms φίλος [or] phílos (beloved, dear) and ἀδελφός [or] adelphós (brother, brotherly)'. Wikipedia also explains that at one time, apart from Native Americans, there were a lot of Dutch and Scandinavian people knocking around the area. Before it was given to Penn that is - who, to be fair, tried hard to be fair to the Native Americans.

Then this afternoon, while waiting for the cheese scones to cook, I was idly turning the pages of  my atlas of the Holy Land, mentioned at reference 1. To find that what is now Amman was once called Rabbath Ammon and was also once called Philadelphia. Also that it was located near the head waters of a substantial tributary of the River Jordan. All this was quickly confirmed by the Wikipedia entry for Amman. Digging deeper there is another Philadelphia in Asia Minor, or at least there was at the time of St. Paul.

So while it may be true that all six Philadelphias listed in my Britannica atlas are in the US, as are the top hits turned up by Bing on the search key 'philadelphia', with 'philadelphia near east' doing no better, the atlas of the Holy Land yields two more. And now that I know the place is in Jordan, gmaps turns up the right place for the search key 'philadelphia jordan'. I can only suppose I did not previously think to look in the index of the atlas of the Holy Land - with hindsight, an obvious enough place.

PS: although, to be fair, the question of what the big Philadelphia was named for remains open, still not being convinced by the Wikipedia story retailed above.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/books-from-honiton.html.