Canaan (son of Ham)

It appears as KUR ki-na-ah-na in the Amarna letters (14th century BC), and knʿn is found on coins from Phoenicia in the last half of the 1st millennium.

One explanation is that it has an original meaning of "lowlands", from a Semitic root knʿ "to be low, humble, depressed", in contrast with Aram, "highlands".

[2] An alternative suggestion derives the term from Hurrian Kinahhu, purportedly referring to the colour purple, so that Canaan and Phoenicia would be synonyms ("Land of Purple"), but it is just as common to assume that Kinahhu was simply the Hurrian rendition of the Semitic knʿn.

For example, Genesis 15:19–21 lists the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.

"the Arvadite") and his wife Entela crossed from Asia into Ethiopia in 2101 BC, and the Qemant tribe were said to be descended from their son, Anayer.

the Sinites and Zemarites, also entered Ethiopia at the time it was ruled by the Kingdom of Kush, and became the Shanqella and Weyto peoples, respectively.

[8] The Omotic speaking Shinasha have a similar tradition of descent from Canaan's son Hamati[9] Similarly, the Shinasha extend the Canaanite ancestry to neighboring ethnic groups[10] The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915) recounted a tradition that the wife of Canaan was named Arsal, a daughter of Batawil son of Tiras, and that she bore him the "Blacks, Nubians, Fezzan, Zanj, Zaghawah, and all the peoples of the Sudan.

c. 1525) recorded a legend that Canaan's sons the "Arkite" and the "Hamathite" first settled in the area of Greece, and gave their names to the regions of Arcadia and Emathia.

[19] In the subsequent passage, "of Shem... may Canaan be his servant,"[9:26] the narrator is foreshadowing Israel's conquest of the promised land.

[20] Biblical scholar Philip R. Davies explains that the author of this narrative used Noah to curse Canaan, in order to provide justification for the later Israelites driving out and enslaving the Canaanites.

According to Barne's exegesis of Genesis 10:18, the Canaanite clans scattered after the Tower of Babel incident and settled in the southern Levant, where they named the region after themselves.