Supposedly, the Phoenician alphabet was the first alphabet used by the Canaans. So, (a) why wasn’t it called the Canaan alphabet? Could this be the Greek name for this alphabet as the words “phonetic” and “phonics” seem too similar to the word “Phoenician”. …Is there a relationship here?
What’s the SD on the ABCs? - Jinx
From the Wikipedia article on the Phoenician Alphabet:
I guess Wiki (with each topic written by self-declared authorities) is saying that the alphabet pre-dates the Canaanites back to a people [which became] known as the Phoenicians. Still, is the name for these people their own name for themselves, or a name assigned to them — much like how the words “Leviticus”, “Numbers”, and “Deuteronomy” were assigned to these books as opposed to the true translation of the Hebrew names for these books.
I’ve also seen the Phoenician alphabet referred to as “paleo-Hebrew”. If you look closely in the DeMille/Heston THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, that is the alphabet God writes on the Tablets.
It would be called the Canaanite alphabet, not that Canaan alphabet, since the language is Canaanite. But the Canaan (or Canaanites) were a large and diverse group of people of whom the Phoenicians were a subset. But the Phoenician alphabet is a descendant of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, so it’s not the original alphabet used by the Canaan. Also, it isn’t technically an alphabet, it’s an abjad (consonants only, no vowels).