Salem, in this sense, is a town in Massachusetts, in the eastern United States. English speakers know it because of the Salem witch trials of 1692. A group of people — many of them women — were accused of being witches, taken to court, and some were officially killed. The story is taught in schools and used in films; the town still lives with that fame. People also borrow Salem as a shorthand for a panic in which a community turns on its own. The phrase witch-hunt grew from this kind of history: punishing people not for a clear crime, but for fear, gossip, or the “wrong” opinions. Capital S — it is a place name. Though actually, Salem is not only this town. There is a Salem in Oregon, and a city called Salem in Tamil Nadu, India, whose name comes from Tamil, not from the same story. This entry is the Massachusetts one. That Salem’s name comes from Biblical Hebrew šālēm (שָׁלֵם), a name already in Genesis, related to the idea of being whole or at peace — the same old name as the Salem in the Bible, not a modern invented label.