Hebrew-language names were coined for the place-names of Palestine throughout different periods under the British Mandate; after the establishment of Israel following the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and 1948 Arab–Israeli War; and subsequently in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. A 1992 study counted c. 2,780 historical locations whose names were Hebraized, including 340 villages and towns, 1,000 Khirbat (ruins), 560 wadis and rivers, 380 springs, 198 mountains and hills, 50 caves, 28 castles and palaces, and 14 pools and lakes. Palestinians consider the Hebraization of place-names in Palestine part of the Palestinian Nakba. Many existing place names in Palestine are based on unknown etymologies. Some are descriptive; some survivals of ancient Nabataean, Hebrew Canaanite, or other names; and the occasional name was unaltered from the forms found in the Hebrew Bible or Talmud. During classical and late antiquity, the ancient place-names metamorphosed into Aramaic and Greek, the two major languages in the region before the advent of Islam. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Arabized forms of the ancient names were adopted. Plans for Hebraization began early in the 20th century. In 1907, the Kiepert maps of Palestine were used by the World Zionist Congress’s Palastinakommission department as the basis for its own Hebrew Palestine Wall-Map, on to which new Hebrew place names and new Jewish colonies would be added over time. The Hebraization of place-names was encouraged by the Israeli government to strengthen the connection of Jews, most of whom had immigrated in recent decades, with the land. As part of this process, some ancient Biblical or Talmudic place-names were restored, although enthusiasm since cooled after mistakes were identified by archeologists. Some names were adapted from Arabic, including cases where Hebraizations were chosen because the Hebrew was a homophone of the Arabic despite having a different meaning. In other cases, sites with only Arabic names and no pre-existing ancient Hebrew names or associations were given new Hebrew names, thereby losing the historical tradition. In some instances, the Palestinian Arabic place name was preserved in the modern Hebrew, despite there being a different Hebrew tradition regarding the name, as in the case of Banias, which in classical Hebrew writings is called Paneas. Municipal direction sign-posts and maps produced by state-run agencies sometimes note the traditional Hebrew name and the traditional Arabic name alongside each other, such as "Nablus / Shechem" and "Silwan / Shiloach" etc. In certain areas of Israel, particularly the mixed cities, there is a growing trend to restore the original Arabic street names that were Hebraized after 1948.
History
Early history
C. R. Conder (1848–1910) of the Palestine Exploration Fund was among the first to analyze present-day Arabic place-names in order to assess what a more ancient Hebrew name may have been. Conder's contribution did not eradicate the Arabic place-names in his Survey of Western Palestine maps, but preserved their names intact, rather than attribute a site to a dubious identification. In his memoirs, he mentions that the Hebrew and Arabic traditions of place-names are often consonant with each other:
The names of the old towns and villages mentioned in the Bible remain for the most part almost unchanged... The fact that each name was carefully recorded in Arabic letters made it possible to compare with the Hebrew in a scientific and scholarly manner... When the Hebrew and the Arabic are shown to contain the same radicals, the same gutturals, and often the same meanings, we have a truly reliable comparison... We have now recovered more than three-quarters of the Bible names, and are thus able to say with confidence that the Bible topography is a genuine and actual topography, the work of Hebrews familiar with the country.
First modern Hebraization efforts
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