Ca'naanites, The. A word used in two senses:
1. A tribe which inhabited a particular locality of the land, west of the Jordan, before the conquest; and
2. The people who inhabited, generally, the whole of that country.
3. In Genesis 10:18-20, the seats of the Canaanite tribe are given as, on the seashore and in the Jordan valley; compare Joshua 11:3.
4. Applied as a general name, to the non-Israelite inhabitants of the land, as we have already seen was the case with "Canaan." Instances of this are, Genesis 12:6; Numbers 21:3. The Canaanites were descendants of Canaan. Their language was very similar to the Hebrew. The Canaanites were probably given to commerce; and thus, the name became, probably, in later times, an occasional synonym for a merchant.