# The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies, and Trade %% [[LCC]]: DS81.A8513 2001 %% ## ch01p9-13 By What Name Do We Know Them? > We know that the Phoenicians called themselves 'Canaanites', and their land Canaan. The term is of eastern Semitic origin and very probably indigenous to the country. [...] In Hebrew, Canaan would have been synonymous with 'land of merchants.' [...] It is obvious, therefore, that the correct and original name of the Phoenicians was Canaanites. This is what their Asian and Egyptian neighbors called them and this is what they called themselves. [...] the North African citizens (the Carthaginians) still called themselves *chanani* (meaning Canaanites). [...] We shall call the Phoenicians of the second millennium BCE 'Canaanites', the Phoenicians of the first millennium BCE in the east and of the eight to sixth centuries 'Phoenicians' and the western Phoenicians from the middle of the sixth century BCE onward 'Punic.' ## ch01 Geography is Destiny > The geography of the coastal plain, made up of compartmentalized regions separated from each other by river valleys and mountain spurs, formed a kind of internal patchwork which favored the development of independent political units organized into city-states. Although Tyre controlled big chunks of Phoenica for years at a time, the Phoenicians never united, nor did they seem to want to, even when pressured by [[Mesopotamia|Assyria]].