While a number of biblical place names like Jerusalem, Athens, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon and Rome have been used for centuries, some have changed over the years. Many place names in the Land of Israel, Holy Land and Palestine are Arabised forms of ancient Hebrew and Canaanite place-names used during biblical timesRainey, 1978, p.230: “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” or later Aramaic or Greek formations.Rainey, 1978, p.231: “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”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.' Most of these names have been handed down for thousands of years though their meaning was understood by only a few.
Hebrew Bible or Old Testament