Name of Morocco

Morocco's modern official Arabic name al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah (‫ )المملكة المغربية‬may best
be translated as 'The Kingdom of the Western Place'.

Historically, the territory has been part of what the Muslim geographers referred to as al-
Maghrib al-Aqṣā [ar] (‫المغرب األقصى‬, 'the Farthest West [of the Islamic world]' designating
roughly the area from Tiaret to the Atlantic) in contrast with neighbouring regions of al-
Maghrib al-Awsaṭ [ar] (‫المغرب األوسط‬, 'the Middle West': Tripoli to Béjaïa) and al-Maghrib al-Adná
[ar] (‫المغرب األدنى‬, 'the Nearest West': Alexandria to Tripoli).[21] Morocco has also been referred
to politically by a variety of terms denoting the Sharifi heritage of the Alawi dynasty, such as al-
Iyālah ash-Sharīfah (‫ )اإليالة الشريفة‬or al-Imbarāṭūriyyah ash-Sharīfah (‫)اإلمبراطورية الشريفة‬, rendered
in French as l'Empire chérifien and in English as the 'Sharifian Empire'.[22][23]

The word Morocco is derived from the name of the city of Marrakesh, which was its capital
under the Almoravid dynasty and the Almohad Caliphate.[24] The origin of the name
Marrakesh is disputed,[25] but it most likely comes from the Berber phrase amur n Yakuš,
where amur can have the meanings "part, lot, promise, protection"[26] and Yakuš (and its
variants Yuš and Akuš) means "God".[27] The expression amur n Ṛebbi where Ṛebbi is another
word for God (borrowed from arabic ‫( َربِّي‬rabbī) "My Lord") means "divine protection".[28] The
modern Berber name for Marrakesh is Mṛṛakc (in the Berber Latin script). In Turkish, Morocco is
known as Fas, a name derived from its ancient capital of Fes. However, in other parts of the
Islamic world, for example in Egyptian and Middle Eastern Arabic literature before the mid-20th
century, the name commonly used to refer to Morocco was Murrakush (‫)مراكش‬.[29]

That name is still used for the nation today in some languages, including Persian, Urdu, and
Punjabi. The English name Morocco is an anglicisation of the Spanish name for the country,
Marruecos. That Spanish name was also the basis for the old Tuscan word for the country,
Morrocco, from which the modern Italian word for the country, Marocco, is derived.