Genesis 10:4

4. Sons of Javan Rather, Yavan, the Ionian families .

Elishah The AEolians, (Elis,) who occupied three fourths of Greece, and spread to the coasts and isles of Asia Minor. (Josephus, Knobel.)

Tarshish A famous commercial people well known to the sacred and classic writers, (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Strabo, Herodotus,) whence the Greek Tartessus and Tartessis, a town and region in southern Spain at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. According to Herodotus, Tartessus was settled by a colony of Phocaean Greeks, (i, 163,) the word signifying in Phenician, younger brother, (Rawl.,) a very suitable name for a colony. Their ships were so celebrated for size and fleetness as to give the name “ships of Tarshish” to all large merchant vessels wherever sailing. The ships of Tarshish (Ezekiel 27:12, etc . ) brought gold and silver, iron, tin, and lead to Tyre, and these are precisely the articles which the classic writers, Strabo, etc . , make the staple products of Spain . Knobel and Furst understand the word to refer to that Pelasgic-Hellenic race called Etruscans, Tuscans, Tyrsenians, who before the Roman dominion peopled Italy and the Sicilies, and thus carried the name to Spain. (Knobel, p. 86.) Hence, perhaps, Tarsus in Cilicia. (Josephus.)

Kittim Cyprians, who still preserve the name in the term Kitti. Josephus says ( Ant. 1: 6) that the Helvens transferred the name Kittim to all the Mediterranean isles and coasts. The Cyprian Kittim is shown by its monuments to have been a Phenician colony, or at least to have had Phenician or Hamitic settlers. But there were also Hamitic Chittim, (Hittites, sons of Heth or Cheth,) see Genesis 10:15, a widespread people in the age of Solomon; and the Japhetic Kittim seem to have mingled at Cyprus with the Hamitic Chittim. (Knobel.)

Dodanim Dardanians, Trojans, or perhaps it should be Rodanim, ( interchange of ד and ר , in the first syllable,) as it is given in 1 Chronicles 1:7, and in some copies by the Septuagint and Samaritan. The Rodani, or Rhodians.