The city is first recorded under its Greek name "Apollonia" in the final decades of the Persian period (mid-4th century BCE). In a long-standing suggestion, first proposed by Clermont-Ganneau in 1876, it was assumed that the Greek name was given due to the "interpretatio graeca" of the Canaanite deity Resheph ("ršp") as Apollo (as god of the plague), suggesting that the settlement would originally have been a "Phoenician" foundation. The Semitic name "ršp" would then have been "restored" in the medieval Arabic toponym of "Arsūf". There is indeed no archaeological evidence for a settlement prior to the Persian period, and Izre'el (1999) upholds this identification, suggesting that the Semitic name might have been preserved by the Aramaic-speaking Samaritan community. The Samaritan chronicle of Abu l-Fath (14th century, written in Arabic) records a toponym "rʿšfyn" (with ayin). Izre'el (1999) considers the possibility of identifying this toponym with the Arabic "Arsūf", assuming that the ayin may derive from a "mater lectionis" used in Samaritan Aramaic orthography.