Salem Look up Salem at Dictionary.com
place mentioned in Gen. xiv:18, from Hebrew Shalem, usually said to be another word for Jerusalem and to mean "peace" (cf. Hebrew shalom, Arabic salaam). So common as a Baptist and Methodist meetinghouse name that by mid-19c. it (along with Bethel and Ebenezer) had come to be used in Britain generically to mean "non-conformist chapel."