Hebrew-language names were coined for the place-names of Palestine throughout different periods under the British Mandate; after the establishment of Israel following the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and 1948 Arab–Israeli War; and subsequently in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. A 1992 study counted 2,780 historical locations whose names were Hebraized, including 340 villages and towns, 1,000 Khirbat (ruins), 560 wadis and rivers, 380 springs, 198 mountains and hills, 50 caves, 28 castles and palaces, and 14 pools and lakes.Study by Palestinian geographer Shukri Arraf (1992), "The Palestinian locations between two eras/maps" (Arabic). Kufur Qari’: Matba’at, Al-Shuruq Al-Arabiya; quoted in Palestinians consider the Hebraization of place-names in Palestine part of the Palestinian Nakba.

Many existing place names in Palestine are based on unknown etymologies. Some are descriptive; some survivals of ancient Nabataean, Hebrew Canaanite, or other names; and the occasional name was unaltered from the forms found in the Hebrew Bible or Talmud.: “What surprised western scholars and explorers the most was the amazing degree to which biblical names were still preserved in the Arabic toponymy of Palestine” During classical and late antiquity, the ancient place-names metamorphosed into Aramaic and Greek,Mila Neishtadt. 'The Lexical Substrate of Aramaic in Palestinian Arabic,' in Aaron Butts (ed.) Semitic Languages in Contact, BRILL 2015 pp.281-282:'As in other cases of language shift, the supplanting language (Arabic) was not left untouched by the supplanted language (Aramaic) and the existence of an Aramaic substrate in Syro-Palestinian colloquial Arabic has been widely accepted. The influence of the Aramaic substrate is especially evidence in many Palestinian place names, and in the vocabularies of traditional life and industrials: agriculture, flora, fauna, food, tools, utensils etc.': “In the majority of cases, a Greek or Latin name assigned by Hellenistic or Roman authorities enjoyed an existence only in official and literary circles while the Semitic- speaking populace continued to use the Hebrew or Aramaic original. The latter comes back into public use with the Arab conquest. The Arabic names Ludd, Beisan, and Saffurieh, representing original Lod, Bet Se’an and Sippori, leave no hint concerning their imposing Greco-Roman names, viz., Diospolis, Scythopolis, and Diocaesarea, respectively” the two major languages in the region before the advent of Islam.Nur Masalha, Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, Zed Books 2018 p.46:'Latin remained the official language of the government in the 6th century, whereas the prevalent language of merchants, farmers, seamen and ordinary citizens was Greek. Also, Aramaic -closely related to Arabic - was a prevalent language among the (predominantly Christian) Palestinian peasantry which constituted the majority of population in the country. Greek, however, became the lingua franca of late Byzantine Palestine, shortly before the advent of Islam. Consequently, the Hellenisation of Palestinian toponyms was not uncommon in Late Antiquity. A well known example of Hellenisation from Late Antiquity is the work of the 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and translator Josephus who spoke Aramaic and Greek and who became a Roman citizen. Both he and Greco-Roman Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria used the toponym Palestine. He listed local Palestinian toponyms and rendered them familiar to Graeco-Roman audiences. Medieval Muslims and modern Palestinians preserved Greco-Roman toponyms such as Nablus (Greek: Neapolis/Νεάπολις), Palestine, Qaysariah (Caesarea/Καισάρεια), but not Philadelphia.' Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Arabized forms of the ancient names were adopted.

Plans for Hebraization began early in the 20th century. In 1907, the Kiepert maps of Palestine were used by the World Zionist Congress’s Palastinakommission department as the basis for its own Hebrew Palestine Wall-Map, on to which new Hebrew place names and new Jewish colonies would be added over time.

The Hebraization of place-names was encouraged by the Israeli government to strengthen the connection of Jews, most of whom had immigrated in recent decades, with the land. As part of this process, some ancient Biblical or Talmudic place-names were restored,Miller and Hayes, 1986, p. 29. although enthusiasm since cooled after mistakes were identified by archeologists. Some names were adapted from Arabic,: "Today there are Hebrew names not only for modern communities such as kibbutzim, settlement towns, etc., but for topographical features (hills, water sources, etc.), and antiquity sites as well. The majority of these are Hebraized forms of the former Arabic name, e.g., Arabic Tell 'Arâd is Tel ʿArad, Tell Jezer is now Tel Gezer, Khirbet Mešâš has become Tel Masos. Frequently, the new Hebrew form is not really cognate to the Arabic but was chosen for its general resemblance; Tell el-Fâr: "The Mound of the Mouse" has been promoted to Tel Par: "The Mound of the Bull." The earlier enthusiasm for restoring biblical names to their ancient sites has cooled down somewhat, especially after Tell (ʿArâq) el-Menšîyeh, changed to Tel Gat, was proved not to be a suitable candidate for Gath of the Philistines. Now the site is called Tel ʿErani after the epithet of Sheikh Ahmed el-ʿAreinī, whose tomb is located there." including cases where Hebraizations were chosen because the Hebrew was a homophone of the Arabic despite having a different meaning. In other cases, sites with only Arabic names and no pre-existing ancient Hebrew names or associations were given new Hebrew names, thereby losing the historical tradition.Swedenburg, 2003, p. 50. In some instances, the Palestinian Arabic place name was preserved in the modern Hebrew, despite there being a different Hebrew tradition regarding the name, as in the case of Banias, which in classical Hebrew writings is called Paneas.Vilnay, Zev (1954), p. 135 (section 9). Cf. Targum Shir HaShirim 5:4; etc. The reason for the hard-sounding "b" in the Arabic pronunciation of Banias has to do with the fact that, in the Arabic language, there is no hard "p" sound; the "p" being replaced by "b". Municipal direction sign-posts and maps produced by state-run agencies sometimes note the traditional Hebrew name and the traditional Arabic name alongside each other, such as "Nablus / Shechem" and "Silwan / Shiloach" etc.Sign welcoming visitors to Siloam (Shiloach), printed both in Hebrew and Arabic with traditional names, B'Tselem, 16 September 2014 In certain areas of Israel, particularly the mixed cities, there is a growing trend to restore the original Arabic street names that were Hebraized after 1948.

History

Early history

C. R. Conder (1848–1910) of the Palestine Exploration Fund was among the first to analyze present-day Arabic place-names in order to assess what a more ancient Hebrew name may have been. Conder's contribution did not eradicate the Arabic place-names in his Survey of Western Palestine maps, but preserved their names intact, rather than attribute a site to a dubious identification.Hopkins, I.W.J. (1968), p. 34. Quote: "Conder collected the current Arabic names for the places on his [P.E.F.] maps, which on the face of it makes them appear to be less useful, compared with Jacotin's [map]. In fact, this makes the P.E.F. map even more useful as evidence of the current Arab place name, and the sheets are not cluttered up with doubtful identifications. The Arabic name is often a corruption of the ancient name and this fact has helped enormously in locating Biblical, Classical and Byzantine sites." In his memoirs, he mentions that the Hebrew and Arabic traditions of place-names are often consonant with each other:

The names of the old towns and villages mentioned in the Bible remain for the most part almost unchanged... The fact that each name was carefully recorded in Arabic letters made it possible to compare with the Hebrew in a scientific and scholarly manner... When the Hebrew and the Arabic are shown to contain the same radicals, the same gutturals, and often the same meanings, we have a truly reliable comparison... We have now recovered more than three-quarters of the Bible names, and are thus able to say with confidence that the Bible topography is a genuine and actual topography, the work of Hebrews familiar with the country.Conder, Major C. R. (n.d.), pp. 218–219

First modern Hebraization efforts

Modern Hebraization efforts began from the time in the First Aliyah in 1880. In the early 1920s, the HeHalutz youth movement began a Hebraization program for newly established settlements in Mandatory Palestine. These names, however, were applied only to sites purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), as they had no sway over the names of other sites in Palestine.

Seeing that directional signposts were frequently inscribed only in the Arabic language with their English transliterations (excluding their equivalent Hebrew names), the Jewish community in Palestine, led by prominent Zionists such as David Yellin, tried to influence the naming process initiated by the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS's) Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, so as to make the naming more inclusive. Despite these efforts, well-known cities and geographical places, such as Jerusalem, Jericho, Nablus, Hebron, the Jordan River, etc. carried names in both Hebrew and Arabic writing (e.g. Jerusalem / Al Quds / Yerushalayim and Hebron / Al Khalil / Ḥevron),Adler, Elkan Nathan (2014), pp. 225, et al. but lesser-known classical Jewish sites of antiquity (e.g. Jish / Gush Halav; Beisan /Beit She'an; Shefar-amr / Shefarʻam; Kafr 'Inan / Kefar Hananiah; Bayt Jibrin / Beit Gubrin, etc.) remained inscribed after their Arabic names, without change or addition.Gleichen, Edward, ed. (1925). Quote: (Preface) "The following List of Names in Palestine, having been submitted through H.M. Secretary of State for the Colonies to the High Commissioner, and referred by him for correction to special Arabic and Hebrew subcommittees, is now published by the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official use."British Colonial Office in Palestine (1931), pp. 1, 13, 37, 52, 54–56, 59, 65. Quote: (p. 2) "The list of geographical names has presented many difficulties. Many place names in Palestine are of Arabic origin while others are of Hebrew, Phoenician, Greek, Latin, or Frankish ancestry –– to mention only the most important sources –– but, as most places are inhabited by Arabic-speaking people, local usage has given them names in Arabicised forms or in colloquial Arabic. To adopt the colloquial forms in transliterating names was not considered consistent with the end in view, and as a general rule an effort has been made to put the names in as literary a garb as possible. In most names of Arabic origin this was comparatively easy; but in some the Arab experts recommended the retention of forms not usually admitted in Arabic grammatical word construction." The main objection to adding additional spellings for ancient Hebrew toponymy was the fear that it would cause confusion to the postal service, when long accustomed names were given new names, as well as be totally at variance with the names already inscribed on maps. Therefore, British officials sought to ensure unified forms of place-names.Gleichen, Edward (1920), p. 309