The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all tell us that Jesus was crucified in a place called Golgotha.
They also all tell us that Golgotha is a Hebrew word meaning “place of the skull”. (Technically, Golgotha is an Aramaic word, but Aramaic is commonly called Hebrew, since it was the common language of the Hebrew people at the time).
Plus, the Gospel of Luke simply tells us that they crucified him at a place called “The Skull”.
Every time we see the word “skull” in these passages, it is a translation of the Greek word Kranion, which means “skull” and is also where we get our modern word “cranium”.
But, where do we get the word “Calvary” out of all this?
Well, when the translator Jerome was compiling all the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, he properly translated that Greek word Kranion into the Latin word for “skull”, Calvaria.
Then, as the centuries went by, some people translated the Latin Bible into English. When they did this, they just borrowed the Latin term and called the place “Calvary”, from Calvaria.
Most modern English translations actually use the original manuscripts (Greek) when translating The New Testament though. So, now most Bibles will call it “the place of the skull”.
But, we still have the word “Calvary” now, which is entirely unrelated to an army of horses, a “cavalry”.
And, as for the place where Jesus was crucified, there’s been a whole lot of guessing about where it is and why it’s called the place of the skull.
First, as a quick note, in the original Greek it’s more accurate to say “of the skull” and not “of a skull”.
Anyhow, all four Gospels just call Golgotha/Calvary a “place”. Tradition has said that this was probably a hill, but we don’t really know for certain.
A lot of people seem to think the place was called Golgotha because it was on a hill that kind of looked like a skull. Some other people say that it might have been because it could have been close to some tombs. And there are a good deal more guesses that scholars have made over the years.
The gist of it is all pretty simple though. Jesus was crucified at a place called “place of the skull”. The Hebrew (Aramaic) term for “place of the skull” is Golgotha. And “Calvary” is just pretty much the Latin word for the same thing.