One of the best-known facts about the first Hebrew city is that its name has a meaning - "Spring Hill" in English; furthermore, it is of both biblical and Zionist significance. "Tel Aviv" appears in the Bible, in the Book of Ezekiel (3:15), and is also the title devised by Nahum Sokolow for his Hebrew version of Theodor Herzl's utopian novel "Altneuland" ("Old New Land") - a work of fiction that eventually became fact.I've not encountered this Akkadian etymology before, but it makes sense and I see that the commentaries accept it. But remember, etymology and usage are two different things!
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This brings us to Nahum Sokolow and his idea of translating the title of Herzl's work as "Tel Aviv" in Hebrew. In a letter to Herzl in 1902, he says he is charmed by his own brilliant idea: It has an old biblical Eretz Israel sound, and also expresses the whole point of the book, juxtaposing the biblical heritage - as expressed by tel (the mound of rubble that remains after an ancient city has disappeared) - with aviv, meaning spring, a symbol of renewal.
The title may suit the spirit of Herzl's novel but, as both Ernst Klein and Eliezer Ben Yehuda pointed out, Sokolow was wrong in assuming that aviv in Ezekiel means spring. It is indeed the contemporary Hebrew meaning of the word, but in ancient Hebrew and based on the Akkadian expression, til abubi actually means "heap of ruins left from the waters of the flood." Which is logical, as Ezekiel is speaking about Babylon, where only a heap of rubble remained of the tower built after the flood. (By the way, don't look for the Tower of Babel in the Greek version of the Bible: It is called Syghistu there.)
By the way, the name Sygchysis (not Syghistu) in Greek means "commixture" or "confusion" and is an attempt to translate the Hebrew folk etymology for Bavel (Babylon) in Genesis 11:9.
