LEBANON toponym Lebanon, in Arabic Lebnan, a Middle Eastern country that borders Israel to the south and Syria to the rest of its land borders, comes from the Phoenician derived from the Semitic root LBN (white), by the snow-capped peaks of its mountains. This same root gave us the word benzine. Laban in Arabic means milk. The Republic of Lebanon derives from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, after the First World War. In 1922, at the San Remo Conference, the League of Nations divided the domain of ancient Syria between the United Kingdom, which received Transjordan and Palestine, and France, which received what became present-day Syria and Lebanon.
