I think it was the British who named the country Palestine. Right after they took it from the Ottomans. Previous to that it was a province of the Ottoman empire. That is when the British gave permission for Jewish migration to the area, as stated in the Balfour Declaration of Nov 2 1917..The declaration had the support of Woodrow Wilson and the French. The document expressed British support for a "national homeland for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then a region of the Ottoman empire. The document was from the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour to the prominent British citizen, Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild. That was just a month after the 31st Oct Australian 4th light horse charge that helped break the Turkish lines at Beersheba, opening the way to the invasion of Palestine.
