Many place names in Palestine are Arabized forms of ancient Canaanite and Biblical Hebrew or Aramaic place-names used over the course of the long history of Palestine. Most of these names have been handed down for thousands of years though their meaning was understood by only a few. The cultural interchange fostered by the various successive empires to have ruled the region is apparent in its place names. Any particular place can be known by the different names used in the past, with each of these corresponding to a historical period. The importance of toponymy, or geographical naming, was first recognized by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), a British organization who mounted geographical map-making expeditions in the region in the late 19th century. Shortly thereafter, the British Mandatory authorities set out to gather toponymic information from local fellahin, who had been proven to have preserved knowledge of the ancient place names which could help identify archaeological sites. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, many place names have since been Hebraicized, and are referred to by their revived biblical names. In some cases, even sites with only Arabic names and no pre-existing ancient Hebrew names or associations have been given new Hebrew names. Place names in the region have been the subject of much scholarship and contention, particularly in the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict. Their significance lies in their potential to legitimize the historical claims asserted by the involved parties, all of whom claim priority in chronology, and who use archaeology, cartography, and place names as their proofs.
History The local population of Palestine used Semitic languages, such as Canaanite, ancient and Mishnaic Hebrew, Aramaic (Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Samaritan Aramaic and Nabataean Aramaic), and Arabic (Old Arabic, Nabataean Arabic, Palestinian Arabic) for thousands of years. Almost all place names in the region have Semitic roots, with only a few place names being of Latin origin, and hardly any of Greek or Turkish origins. The Semitic roots of the oldest names continued to be used by the local population, though during classical antiquity, many names underwent modifications due to the influence of local ruling elites well versed in Greek and Latin. In his 4th-century work, the Onomasticon, Eusebius of Caesarea provides a listing of the place-names of Palestine with geographical and historical commentary, and his text was later translated into Latin and edited and corrected by Jerome. Following the Arab conquest of the Levant, many of the pre-classical Northwest Semitic names were revived; though the spelling and pronunciation sometimes differed, the original names were recognizable, "as nearly the same type of language was uninterruptedly spoken in the Southern Levant." Of course, for places where the old name had been lost or for new settlements established during this period, new Arabic names were coined. According to Roy Marom and Ran Zadok, the general outlines of the Palestinian nomenclature of space were well developed, by the 16th century, "instead of being the more recent linguistic product of later centuries as previously thought." Palestinian place-names "traditionally regarded as the product of modern Palestinian rural society, reflect instead a long-lasting linguistic continuity of the country’s Arabic speaking village communities." A local study of place-names around Hamama has shown that Palestinian toponymy contained a limited stratum of pre-Ottoman place-names, to which residents added new toponyms, referring in cases to families living in or around the village. Work on Palestinian toponymy has pointed to marked long-term survival of local place-names. Between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, roughly half to three-fifths of major and minor landscape names, including field names, trees, and rocky features, remained in use. On that basis, scholars have also drawn on Early Ottoman documentation to recover and match names mentioned in classical sources for sites still occupied in the Late Roman period.
European travelers composed travel accounts describing its topography and demography. However, even in last century of Ottoman imperial rule, there was still much confusion over the place names in Palestine. Existing Turkish transliterations of the Arabic and Arabicized names made identification and study into the etymology of the place names even more challenging. Edward Robinson identified more than 100 biblical place names in Palestine, by pursuing his belief that linguistic analysis of the place names used by the Arab fellahin would reveal preserved traces of their ancient roots. The PEF's Names and Places in the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, with their Modern Identifications (1895) lists more than 1,150 place names related to the Old Testament and 162 related to the New, most of which are located in Palestine. These surveys by Robinson the PEF, and other Western biblical geographers in late 19th and early 20th centuries, also eventually contributed to the shape of the borders delineated for the British Mandate in Palestine, as proposed by the League of Nations. Over the last 125 years, beginning with Zionist immigration and intensifying following the establishment of Israel in parts of Palestine, 7000 place names have since been Hebraized or are referred to by their revived Biblical names. In some cases, even sites with only Arabic names and no pre-existing ancient Hebrew names or associations have been given new Hebrew names.
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