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The English term "Palestine" itself is borrowed from Latin Palaestīna, [32] which is, in turn, borrowed from Ancient Greek Παλαιστῑ́νη, Palaistī́nē, used by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE.
The region of Palestine, [iii] also known as historic Palestine, [1] [2] [3] is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes modern-day Israel and Palestine, as well as parts of northwestern Jordan in some definitions. Other names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, or the Holy Land.
While a number of biblical place names like Jerusalem, Athens, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon and Rome have been used for centuries, some have changed over the years. Many place names in the Land of Israel, Holy Land and Palestine are Arabised forms of ancient Hebrew and Canaanite place-names used during biblical times [1] [2] [3] or later Aramaic or Greek formations.
Standard Hebrew has two names for Palestine, both of which are different from the Hebrew name for ancient Philistia. The first name Palestina was used by Hebrew speakers in the British Mandate of Palestine; it is spelled like the name for Philistia but with three more letters added to the end and a Latin pronunciation given.
Syria Palaestina (Koinē Greek: Συρία ἡ Παλαιστίνη, romanized: Syría hē Palaistínē [syˈri.a (h)e̝ pa.lɛsˈt̪i.ne̝]) was the renamed Roman province formerly known as Judaea, following the Roman suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in what then became known as the Palestine region between the early 2nd and late 4th centuries AD.
The local population of Palestine used Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Samaritan Aramaic and Arabic for thousands of years. [10] Almost all place names in the region have Semitic roots, with only a few place names being of Latin origin, and hardly any of Greek or Turkish origins. [10]
The name "Palestine" was no longer used as the official name of an administrative unit under the Ottomans because they typically named provinces after their capitals. Nonetheless, the old name remained popular and semi-official, [323] with many examples of its usage in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries surviving.
Indeed, many toponyms in Modern Greek now have different names than were used in by Greek-speaking communities in the past. An example is Malta, which was called Μελίτη (Melítē) and was once home to a Greek-speaking community. However, this community is gone or assimilated, and the common Modern Greek name is Μάλτα (Málta, from ...