section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  Being a society of independent city states, the Phoenicians apparently did not have a term to denote the land of Phoenicia as a whole; instead, demonyms were often derived from the name of the city an individual hailed from (e.g., Sidonian for Sidon, Tyrian for Tyre, etc.) If the Phoenicians had an endonym to denote the land overall, some scholars believe that they would have used " Canaan " and therefore referred to themselves as "Canaanites". Krahmalkov reconstructs the Honeyman inscription (dated to c. 900 BC by William F. Albright) as containing a reference to the Phoenician homeland, calling it Pūt (Phoenician: 𐤐𐤕).
  
  Obelisks at Karnak contain references to a "land of fnḫw ", fnḫw being the plural form of fnḫ, the Ancient Egyptian word for 'carpenter'. This "land of carpenters" is generally identified as Phoenicia, given that Phoenicia played a central role in the lumber trade of the Levant. As an exonym, fnḫw was evidently borrowed into Greek as φοῖνιξ, phoînix, which meant variably 'Phoenician person', ' Tyrian purple, crimson ' or ' date palm '. Homer used it with each of these meanings. The word is already attested in Mycenaean Greek Linear B from the 2nd millennium BC, as po-ni-ki-jo. In those records, it means 'crimson' or 'palm tree' and does not denote a group of people. The name Phoenicians, like Latin Poenī (adj. poenicus, later pūnicus), comes from Greek Φοινίκη, Phoiníkē. Poenulus, a Latin comedic play written in the early 2nd century BC, appears to preserve a Punic term for 'Phoenicians', which may be reconstructed as * Pōnnīm.