Zion began purely as a toponym — the name of the Jebusite hill-fortress in Jerusalem that King David captured and made his City of David (2 Samuel 5). Over centuries of biblical and post-biblical use, the word's reference expanded outward in concentric circles: from one hill, to the Temple Mount, to all of Jerusalem, to the Land of Israel as a whole, and finally to a metaphorical 'heaven' or ideal restored kingdom in prophetic and messianic literature. Its adoption as a given name (rather than a place or symbolic term) is comparatively recent, and in the contemporary US is heavily shaped by Christian, Black American, and Rastafari-associated usage rather than by direct biblical naming precedent (there is no 'Zion' as a person in the Bible). What is well documented: Tsiyon named a specific hill/fortress in Jerusalem before it came to stand for the whole city, the Jewish homeland, and heaven. What is NOT settled: the literal root meaning of the word itself. Etymological dictionaries (Klein's, as summarized by Balashon, and the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, as summarized by Abarim Publications) list at least four competing candidate roots — 'to erect/monument,' 'to protect/fortress,' 'dry/bare place,' and 'bald' — and explicitly call the word's etymology uncertain. It is also possible the name predates Hebrew altogether as a Jebusite word whose original sense was never Hebrew in the first place. No single 'true meaning' should be presented as settled fact.