Where does the name "Palestine" comes from?

Where exactly does the name "Palestine" come from? The earliest records we have can be traced back to the Egyptian word "Peleset" around 1150 BC, which referred to a neighboring region of people whom most historians generally identify as the Philistines. The Philistines were believed to be a seafaring people who migrated from the eastern Mediterranean to the southern Levant region around the 12th century BC. They began to decline and disappear as a distinct people from the 8th and 6th centuries BC from conquest and assimilation.

The Hebrews called the Philistines "Plištīm" or "Pelishtim" and referred to the region they occupied as "Peleshet." Both the Hebrew "Peleshet" and the Egyptian “Peleset” are derived independently but refer to the same geographic region and the people that inhabited them, the Philistines. In Biblical times, the Philistines occupied primarily the coastal regions in what today is southwestern Israel, including the Gaza Strip.

The Greeks later adopted the name "Palaistinē" from the Semitic-speaking peoples they encountered. Herodotus is the first Greek recorded to use the name Palaistinē to refer to the coastal Levant region around the 5th century BC. In fact, Herodotus traveled to Egypt and likely picked up the use of the word "Palaistinē" from his contact with the Egyptians. By that time, the Philistines had faded from history as a distinct people, and it was used to identify a geographic region. Generally, it referred to the entire region between Syria and Egypt.

The Romans Latinized the Greek word "Palaistinē" and turned it into Palaestina. The Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the province Syria Palaestina after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 AD). So, no, the Romans didn't invite the name but adopted it from the Greeks. On this point, it is inferred because the Romans didn't originate the name; it wasn't done as an insult to rename the region after Israel's ancestral enemies, the Philistines. While there is no recorded decree that it was renamed for this reason, it is safe to assume it was done to disconnect the Jews from the land. Prior to the last Jewish revolt, it was referred to by the Romans as Judaea (Iudaea in Latin).

The Arabs and Ottoman Turks, in turn, adopted the name "Palestina" into their native languages, "Filasṭīn" and "Filistin," respectively. It's also where the English name "Palestine" originates from. “Palestine” (Filistin) was the informal name for the region during the Ottoman Empire. There you have it. Palestine has its roots in the Philistines, who no longer exist as a distinct people, and later became associated with the broad geographical area they occupied. Palestinian didn't become a national identity until the 19th century.