Where does the name “Palestine” come from?

The name is about 3,000 years old. For almost all of that time it has been the name of a place, not a people or a state, and the area it covered has kept changing.

1. c. 1175 BCEThe Philistines. Egyptian records name a seafaring people, the Peleset, who settled on the southern coast around Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. The Hebrew Bible calls them Pelishtim and their coastal land Peleshet. They are Goliath's people.
2. 604 BCEThe Babylonians conquered the Philistine cities. The Philistines disappeared as a distinct people, but their name stayed on the map.
3. c. 450 BCEThe Greek historian Herodotus wrote of Palaistinē, sometimes meaning just the coast and sometimes the wider region inland.
4. 135 CERome renames Judea. After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt, the last major Jewish uprising, Emperor Hadrian merged the province of Judaea into Syria Palaestina and rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina. Many historians see the renaming as an attempt to cut the Jewish connection to the land. Others note the name was already in use and call it an administrative change.
5. c. 400The Byzantine Empire divided the region into Palaestina Prima, Secunda and Tertia.
6. 630sThe Arab conquerors kept the name as Jund Filasṭīn, a military district with its capital at Ramla. Arabic has no “p” sound, so Palestine became Filasṭīn.
7. 1516–1917No province called Palestine. Under the Ottomans, the land was split among districts run from Jerusalem, Nablus, Acre, Beirut and Damascus. “Palestine” and Filasṭīn survived informally, and Europeans often called it the Holy Land. In 1911 an Arab newspaper named Filasṭīn was founded in Jaffa.
8. 1920–48British Mandate Palestine. For the first time in modern history, Palestine was an official territory with borders. Jews and Arabs living there were both “Palestinians,” with passports reading “Palestine.” Jewish institutions used the name too: The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post, and the Palestine Orchestra, now the Israel Philharmonic.
9. 1948–todayThe Jewish state named itself Israel, and “Palestinian” came to mean the Arab people of the land. Historians differ on when a distinct Palestinian national identity formed. Some trace it to the late Ottoman period, and others say it took shape after 1948 and 1967. Today about 150 countries recognize a State of Palestine.

So when someone says “Free Palestine,” which Palestine do they mean: the Philistine coast, Hadrian's province, the British Mandate, or the West Bank and Gaza? That's the question this map asks.