Chișinău (/ˌkɪʃɪˈnaʊ/ ^ⓘ KISH-in-OW, US also /ˌkiːʃiːˈnaʊ/ KEE-shee-NOW, Romanian: [kiʃiˈnəw] ^ⓘ; formerly known as Kishinev) is the capital and largest city of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial centre. It is situated in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc, a tributary of the Dniester. According to the results of the 2014 Moldovan census, the population of the city proper stood at 532,513 inhabitants, while the population of the Municipality of Chișinău (which includes the city itself and other nearby communities) numbered 700,000 people. Chișinău is the most economically prosperous locality in Moldova and the country's largest transport hub. Nearly a third of Moldova's population resides in the metropolitan area.

Moldova has a history of winemaking dating back to at least 3,000 BC. As the capital city, Chișinău hosts the yearly national wine festival every October. Though the city's buildings were significantly damaged during the Second World War and earthquakes, a rich architectural heritage remains. In addition, it has numerous buildings designed in the postwar Socialist realism and Brutalist architecture styles.

The city's central railway station boasts a Russian-Imperial architectural style and maintains direct railway links to Romania. The Swiss-Italian-Russian architect Alexander Bernardazzi designed many of the city's buildings, including the Chișinău City Hall, Church of Saint Theodore, and the Church of Saint Panteleimon. The city hosts the National Museum of Fine Arts, Moldova State University, Brancusi Gallery, and National Museum of History of Moldova, with more than 236,000 exhibits.

There are bustling markets in the north of the city, including the house where Alexander Pushkin once resided while in exile from Alexander I of Russia. It has now been adapted as a museum. The Nativity Cathedral, located at the centre of the city and constructed in the 1830s, has been described as a "masterpiece" of Neoclassical architecture.

The origin of the city's name is unclear. A theory suggests that the name may be derived from the archaic Romanian word chișla (meaning "spring", "source of water") and nouă ("new"), because it was built around a small spring, at the corner of Pușkin and Albișoara streets.

The other version, formulated by (or attributed to) Ștefan Ciobanu (occasionally to Iorgu Iordan), a Romanian historian and academician, holds that the name was formed the same way as the name of Chișineu (alternatively spelled as Chișinău) in Western Romania, near the border with Hungary. Its Hungarian name is Kisjenő, from which the Romanian name originates. Kisjenő comes from kis "small" and the Jenő, one of the seven Hungarian tribes that entered the Carpathian Basin in 896.

A third theory by Kiss Lajos, linguist and Slavist, holds (as a possible origin) that the name came from the Cuman kešene ("grave", kurgan) and the Karachayian for "cemetery", and these came from the Persian word kāšāne ("house").[1]

Chișinău is known in Russian as Kishinyov (Кишинёв, pronounced [kʲɪʂɨˈnʲɵf]), while Moldova's Russian-language media call it Kishineu (Кишинэу, pronounced [kʲɪʂɨˈnɛʊ]). It is written Kişinöv in the Latin Gagauz alphabet. It was also written as Chișineu in pre–20th-century Romanian and as Кишинэу in the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet. Historically, the English-language name for the city, Kishinev, was based on the modified Russian one because it entered the English language via Russian at the time Chișinău was part of the Russian Empire (e.g., Kishinev pogrom). Therefore, it remains a common English name in some historical contexts. Otherwise, the Romanian-based Chișinău has been steadily gaining wider currency, especially in written language. The city is also historically referred to as Lithuanian: Kišiniovas; Hungarian: Kisjenő; German: Kischinau [ˌkɪʃiˈnaʊ] ^ⓘ; Polish: Kiszyniów [kʲiˈʂɨɲuf] ^ⓘ; Ukrainian: Кишинів, romanized: Kyshyniv, pronounced [ˈkɪʃɪn⁽ʲ⁾iu̯] ^ⓘ; Bulgarian: Кишинев, romanized: Kishinev; Yiddish: קעשענעװ, romanized: Keshenev; or Turkish: Kişinev.