Mecca of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city, although the official transliteration used by the Saudi government is "Makkah", which is closer to the Arabic pronunciation. The word "Mecca" in English has come to be used to refer to any place that draws large numbers of people, and because of this some English speaking Muslims have come to regard the use of this spelling for the city as offensive. The Saudi government adopted "Makkah" as the official spelling in the 1980s, but is not universally known or used worldwide. The full official name is "Makkah al-Mukarramah" ()
Mecca (, Kaaba). This form is used for the name Mecca in the Quran in 3:96, while the form Mecca is used in 48:24. In South Arabic, the language in use in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad, the "b" and "m" were interchangeable. Other references to Mecca in the Quran (6:92, 42:5) call it "Umm al-Qurā" (), meaning "Mother of All Settlements"/"mother of villages". Another name of Mecca is "Ṫihāmah" (). Another name for Mecca, or the wilderness and mountains surrounding it, according to Arab and Islamic tradition, is Faran or Pharan, referring to