 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.Mecca is the familiar form of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city, 

The consensus in academic scholarship is that "Macoraba", the place mentioned in Arabia Felix by Claudius Ptolemy, is Makkah.Many etymologies have been proposed but the most suitable one is that it is derived from the Old South Arabian root "M-K-R-B" which means temple.