Canaan

Meaning

Proper Noun

• (historical) region Middle East (region), roughly equivalent to Palestine.
• A grandson of Noah.
• A male given name from Hebrew of biblical origin.

Origin

• Taken (at least as early as Wycliffe's Bible, 1382-1395, which has Chanaan) from , from Ancient Greek Χαναάν, expanded from Χνᾶ, from Hebrew כְּנַעַן. The first vowel shifted from /aː/ to /eɪ/ in the Great Vowel Shift; at least as early as Milton (1660s), the word could already be pronounced with two syllables, though at least as late as the 1880s it could also be pronounced with three, .