It was named after the princess Thessalonike of Macedon, the half sister of Alexander the Great, whose name means "Thessalian victory", from Thessalos, and 'victory' (Nike), honoring the Macedonian victory at the Battle of Crocus Field (353/352 BC). Minor variants are also found, including , , , and . The name is first attested in Greek in the Chronicle of the Morea (14th century), and is common in folk songs, but it must have originated earlier, as al-Idrisi called it Salunik already in the 12th century. It is the basis for the city's name in other languages: (Solunŭ) in Old Church Slavonic, () in Judeo-Spanish (שאלוניקי prior to the 19th century) () in Hebrew, (Selenik) in Albanian language, (Selânik) in Ottoman Turkish and in modern Turkish, in Italian, Solun or in the local and neighboring South Slavic languages, (Saloníki) in Russian, in Aromanian and in Megleno-Romanian. In English, the city can be called Thessaloniki, Salonika, Thessalonica, Salonica, Thessalonika, Saloniki, Thessalonike, or Thessalonice. In printed texts, the most common name and spelling until the early 20th century was Thessalonica; through most of rest of the 20th century, it was Salonika. By about 1985, the most common single name became Thessaloniki. The forms with the Latin ending -a taken together remain more common than those with the phonetic Greek ending -i and much more common than the ancient transliteration -e. Thessaloniki was revived as the city's official name in 1912, when it joined the Kingdom of Greece during the Balkan Wars. In local speech, the city's name is typically pronounced with a dark and deep L, characteristic of the accent of the modern Macedonian dialect of Greek. The name is often abbreviated as . History From classical antiquity to the Roman Empire The city was founded around 315 BC by the King Cassander of Macedon, on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and 26 other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonike, a half-sister of Alexander the Great and princess of Macedonia as daughter of Philip II. Under the kingdom of Macedonia the city retained its own autonomy and parliament and evolved to become the most important city in Macedonia. Twenty years after the fall of the Kingdom of Macedonia in 168 BC, in 148 BC, Thessalonica was made the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. Thessalonica became a free city of the Roman Republic