Calvary was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was said to have been crucified according to the canonical Gospels. Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage. The exact location of Calvary has been traditionally associated with a place now enclosed within one of the southern chapels of the multidenominational Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site said to have been recognized by the Roman empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, during her visit to the Holy Land in 325. Other locations have been suggested: in the 19th century, Protestant scholars proposed a different location near the Garden Tomb on Green Hill (now "Skull Hill") about 500 m (1,600 ft) north of the traditional site and historian Joan Taylor has more recently proposed a location about 175 m (574 ft) to its south-southeast.

The English names Calvary and Golgotha derive from the Vulgate Latin Calvariae, Cavlariae locus and locum (all meaning "place of the Skull" or "a Skull"), and Golgotha used by Jerome in his translations of Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, Luke 23:33, and John 19:17. Versions of these names have been used in English since at least the 10th century, a tradition shared with most European languages including French (Calvaire), Spanish and Italian (Calvario), pre-Lutheran German (Calvarie), Polish (Kalwaria), and Lithuanian (Kalvarijos). The 1611 King James Version borrowed the Latin forms directly, while Wycliffe and other translators anglicized them in forms like Caluarie, Caluerie, and Calueri which were later standardized as Calvary. While the Gospels merely identify Golgotha as a "place", Christian tradition has described the location as a hill or mountain since at least the 6th century. It has thus often been referenced as Mount Calvary in English hymns and literature.

In the 1769 King James Version, the relevant verses of the New Testament are:

And when they were come unto a place called Golgatha, that is to say, a place of a skull, They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink. And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots... And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull. And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not. And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take. And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. In the standard Koine Greek texts of the New Testament, the relevant terms appear as Golgothâ (Γολγοθᾶ), Golgathân (Γολγοθᾶν),kraníou tópos (κρανίου τόπος), Kraníou tópos (Κρανίου τόπος), Kraníon (Κρανίον), and Kraníou tópon (Κρανίου τόπον).Golgotha's Hebrew equivalent would be Gulgōleṯ (גֻּלְגֹּלֶת, "skull"), ultimately from the verb galal (גלל) meaning "to roll". The form preserved in the Greek text, however, is actually closer to Aramaic Golgolta, which also appears in reference to a head count in the Samaritan version of Numbers 1:18, although the term is traditionally considered to derive from Syriac Gāgūlṯā (ܓܓܘܠܬܐ) instead.Although Latin calvaria can mean either "a skull" or "the skull" depending on context and numerous English translations render the relevant passages "place of the skull" or "Place of the Skull", the Greek forms of the name grammatically refer to the place of a skull and a place named Skull.(The Greek word κρᾱνῐ́ον does more specifically mean the cranium, the upper part of the skull, but it has been used metonymously since antiquity to refer to skulls and heads more generally.)

The Fathers of the Church offered various interpretations of the name and its origin. Jerome considered it a place of execution by beheading (locum decollatorum), Pseudo-Tertullian describes it as a place resembling a head, and Origen associated it with legends concerning the skull of Adam. This buried skull of Adam appears in noncanonical medieval legends, including the Kitab al-Magall, the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, the Cave of Treasures, and the works of Eutychius, the 9th-century patriarch of Alexandria. The usual form of the legend is that Shem and Melchizedek retrieved the body of Adam from the resting place of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat and were led by angels to Golgotha, a skull-shaped hill at the center of the earth where Adam had previously crushed the serpent's head following the Fall of Man.

In the 19th century, Wilhelm Ludwig Krafft proposed an alternative derivation of these names, suggesting that the place had actually been known as "Gol Goatha"—which he interpreted to mean "heap of death" or "hill of execution"—and had become associated with the similar sounding Semitic words for "skull" in folk etymologies. James Fergusson identified this "Goatha" with the Goʿah (גֹּעָה) mentioned in Jeremiah 31:39 as a place near Jerusalem, although Krafft himself identified that location with the separate Gennáth (Γεννάθ) of Josephus, the "Garden Gate" west of the Temple Mount.