Map - Palmyra (modern) (Tadmur)

Palmyra (تَدْمُر; Palmyrene: ????? Tadmor) is a city in central Syria, administratively part of the Homs Governorate. It is located in an oasis in the middle of the Syrian Desert 215 km northeast of Damascus and 180 km southwest of the Euphrates River. The ruins of ancient Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are situated about 500 m southwest of the modern city centre. Relatively isolated, the nearest localities include Arak to the east, Al-Sukhnah further to the northeast, Tiyas to the west and al-Qaryatayn to the southwest.

Palmyra is the administrative centre of the Tadmur District and the Tadmur Subdistrict. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the city had a population of 51,323 and the subdistrict a population of 55,062 in the 2004 census. Tadmur's inhabitants were recorded to be predominantly Sunni Muslims in 1838. It has a small Christian community. The city has a Syriac Catholic Church, which is the only church in the city. During the Syrian Civil War, the city's population significantly increased due to the influx of internally displaced refugees from other parts of the country.

In Arabic, both cities are known as 'Tadmur'. Tadmur is the Semitic and earliest attested native name of the city; it appeared in the first half of the second millennium BC. The etymology of "Tadmur" is vague; Albert Schultens considered it to be derived from the Semitic word for dates ("Tamar"), in reference to the palm trees that surround the city. 13th century Syrian geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi states Tadmur was the name of the daughter of one of Noah's distant descendants and that she was buried in the city.

In English and other European languages, the ancient and modern cities are commonly known as "Palmyra". The name "Palmyra" appeared during the early first century AD, in the works of Pliny the Elder, and was used throughout the Greco-Roman world. The general view holds that "Palmyra" is derived from "Tadmur" either as an alteration, which was supported by Schultens, or as a translation using the Greek word for palm ("palame", παλάμη), which is supported by Jean Starcky. Michael Patrick O'Connor argued for a Hurrian origin of both "Palmyra" and "Tadmur", citing the incapability of explaining the alterations to the theorized roots of both names, which are represented in the adding of a -d- to "Tamar" and a -ra- to "palame". According to this theory, "Tadmur" is derived from the Hurrian word "tad", meaning "to love", + a typical Hurrian mid vowel rising (mVr) formant "mar". "Palmyra" is derived from the word "pal", meaning "to know", + the same mVr formant "mar".

There is a Syriac etymology for Tadmor, referring to dmr "to wonder", and Tedmurtā (Aramaic: ܬܕܡܘܪܬܐ) "Miracle"; thus Tadmūra means "object of wonder", most recently affirmed by Franz Altheim and Ruth Altheim-Stiehl (1973), but rejected by Jean Starcky (1960) and Michał Gawlikowski (1974).