A variety of proposals have been made, but beyond the references in the Bible to Hivites in the land of Canaan, no consensus has been reached about their precise historical identity.
[1] No name resembling Hivite has been found in Egyptian or Mesopotamian inscriptions, though the Hiyawa in a Luvian-Phoenician bilingual has been linked to the Biblical Hiwwi.
However, the Septuagint reads these four towns as inhabited by Horites, suggesting that the name Hivite may have entered the Masoretic Text via a spelling error.
[3] Similarly in 2 Samuel 24:7 according to the Masoretic Text, Hivites are mentioned immediately after "the stronghold of Tyre," where the Septuagint once again reads "Hittites.
Medieval Jewish exegetes like Nachmanides and Radak have suggested that the Hivvites are the same as the Rephaim, which explains why the two names never appear together in Biblical lists of Canaanite tribes.