What I've read suggests that it's actually derived (as Kinahna in the Ancient Egyptian language, that's what they called it in the Amarna Letters) from the proto-Semitic root knʿ, meaning 'low' - as in 'lowland' - contrasting with Aram (modern-day Syria, that original name being derived from Aramu, meaning 'high'). An alternative theory is that the name came from kinahhu, the Akkadian word for purple cloth, the luxury good which Phoenician merchants were most famous for. The Hebrew word for 'merchant' is socher and the Aramaic equivalent was sachar, while in Arabic it's singl. tajir and pl. tajirun (some conection to ancient Akkadian tamkaru/tamkarum, in turn derived from the probable proto-Semitic root mkr, is suspected). None of these sound like they'd lend themselves to anything sounding like Canaan.
What you & this author are probably thinking of were the Phoenicians, who were a Canaanite people (as in, all Phoenicians were Canaanites, but not all Canaanites were Phoenicians) famous for their sailing & trading expertise. They founded a lot of colonies across the Mediterranean, eventually competing with the Greeks in doing so, with Carthage being the most famed example of such. They were also stalwart supporters of Moloch (the bull-headed baby sacrifice demon), with conclusive evidence having been found of their Carthaginian descendants also roasting children for Moloch, and the original Jezebel was a Phoenician princess (from Tyre, the greatest of their city-states) as was the mythical Carthaginian queen and lover of the Roman ancestor Aeneas, Dido.
Other than the Phoenicians, the Canaanite peoples (defined as the pre-Judaic natives of modern-day Israel, so tribes like the Amorites, Ammonites, Moabites, etc.) were not generally known as great traders, so it's a rather dubious theory that any word for 'merchant' would've been applied to the rest of their kind. If anything the Egyptians and Hittites both found them to be a very unruly people prone to banditry and rebellion, not enterprising or pleasant merchants, and a possible origin for the very name Hebrew - the word Habiru/'Apiru - refers to brigands and other malcontents on the fringe of society who resisted the rule of the outside great empires, basically the original terrorists.
What I've read suggests that it's actually derived (as Kinahna in the Ancient Egyptian language, that's what they called it in the Amarna Letters) from the proto-Semitic root knʿ, meaning 'low' - as in 'lowland' - contrasting with Aram (modern-day Syria, that original name being derived from Aramu, meaning 'high'). An alternative theory is that the name came from kinahhu, the Akkadian word for purple cloth, the luxury good which Phoenician merchants were most famous for. The Hebrew word for 'merchant' is socher and the Aramaic equivalent was sachar, while in Arabic it's singl. tajir and pl. tajirun (some conection to ancient Akkadian tamkaru/tamkarum, in turn derived from the probable proto-Semitic root mkr, is suspected). None of these sound like they'd lend themselves to anything sounding like Canaan.
What you & this author are probably thinking of were the Phoenicians, who were a Canaanite people (as in, all Phoenicians were Canaanites, but not all Canaanites were Phoenicians) famous for their sailing & trading expertise. They founded a lot of colonies across the Mediterranean, eventually competing with the Greeks in doing so, with Carthage being the most famed example of such. They were also stalwart supporters of Moloch (the bull-headed baby sacrifice demon), with conclusive evidence having been found of their Carthaginian descendants also roasting children for Moloch, and the original Jezebel was a Phoenician princess (from Tyre, the greatest of their city-states) as was the mythical Carthaginian queen and lover of the Roman ancestor Aeneas, Dido.
Other than the Phoenicians, the Canaanite peoples (defined as the pre-Judaic natives of modern-day Israel, so tribes like the Amorites, Ammonites, Moabites, etc.) were not generally known as great traders, so it's a rather dubious theory that any word for 'merchant' would've been applied to the rest of their kind. If anything the Egyptians and Hittites both found them to be a very unruly people prone to banditry and rebellion, not enterprising or pleasant merchants, and a possible origin for the very name Hebrew - the word Habiru/'Apiru - refers to brigands and other malcontents on the fringe of society who resisted the rule of the outside great empires, basically the original terrorists.