Aram: the Aramean people, the kingdoms they held to Israel's north and east, and the country itself, which many English Bibles call Syria
One name does a lot of work here. It can point to the land, the stretch of country north and east of Israel with Damascus (דַּמֶּשֶׂק) at its heart. It can point to the state, and that is its commonest use by far: about a third of all its appearances sit inside the standing title "the king of Aram," which carries the story of Ben-hadad, Hazael, and Rezin from 1 Kings 15 all the way through 2 Kings 16. And it can point to the people themselves, treated as a single character who marches out, plots, fights, runs, and is beaten.
For most of Israel's history this is the neighbor to the north: an ally now and then, more often the enemy camped on the far side of a disputed border town. Whole chapters of Kings are taken up with those wars, sieges, and uneasy truces. The name also heads up the names of the separate Aramean states David fought, because Aram was never one united country but a set of small kingdoms: Aram of Damascus, Aram-zobah, Aram-beth-rehob, and Aram-maacah.
There is an older and more distant Aram as well, farther up the Euphrates, and that one is family. Abraham's relatives stayed behind there, Isaac and Jacob both took wives from there, and Genesis names it Paddan-aram over and over. Balaam was fetched from there to curse Israel, and Hosea remembers Jacob fleeing to that country to work for a wife. So the same name that marks Israel's fiercest northern rival also marks the place its own ancestors came from.
Nuances
Whether 2 Samuel 8:13 originally named Aram or Edom as the enemy David defeated in the Valley of Salt.
- majorityThe original reading was Edom. The Valley of Salt is Edomite territory, the parallel at 1 Chr 18:12 has Edom, and ארם and אדום are confused graphically throughout the Samuel and Kings tradition.; P. Kyle McCarter Jr., II Samuel, Anchor Bible 9 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984); Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, apparatus at 2 Samuel 8:13
- minorityThe consonantal text as transmitted reads ארם and should be retained, the notice rounding off the Aramean campaign reported in the preceding verses.; Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Masoretic text at 2 Samuel 8:13
Whether the invaders in 2 Chronicles 20:2 are said to come from Aram or from Edom.
- majorityRead Edom. The route described (from beyond the sea, arriving at Hazazon-tamar) and the composition of the coalition require a southern origin, and ארם for אדום is a common graphic slip.; Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993); H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982)
- minorityRetain the transmitted ארם, taking the notice as a loose geographical indication rather than an itinerary.; Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Masoretic text at 2 Chronicles 20:2