The Domain Name System (DNS), while foundational to the global Internet, exhibits structural weaknesses: centralized trust anchors, plaintext metadata exposure, and long-lived records that facilitate surveillance, censorship, and targeted attacks. LHDNS (Ledger-based Hashed Decentralized Naming System) reimagines name resolution by combining cryptographic hashing, rotating nonces, ephemeral ledger entries, and decentralized consensus. Identifiers are derived from secure hashes; lookup events are time-limited and verifiable; and identity is decoupled from transport. LHDNS provides a privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant, and verifiable naming layer while offering feasible migration via gateways, browser APIs, and dual-stack compatibility. This whitepaper details the architecture, protocol flows, security model, governance, tokenomics, and deployment roadmap for LHDNS.