They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born to Israel: however the name of the city was Laish at the first.
"Indeed, things are so wrong in Judges 18, and the Danites’ behavior is so repulsive, that it is hard not to conclude that Judges 18 is an intentional polemic against Dan, probably because Dan and Bethel became the two northern cultic sites that rivaled Jerusalem." [Note: McCann, pp. 124-25.] 