The Bible is full of interesting words and etymologies. And, surprisingly often, it actually explains them to us.
One example is found in 1 Kings 16:24, where it says:
“24 He [Omri, King of Israel] bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver and built a city on the hill, calling it Samaria, after Shemer, the name of the former owner of the hill.”
So, if you’ve ever wondered what “Samaria” meant, there you have it. It’s named after some guy (or maybe a family/clan) who owned the hill on which Samaria was built.
And, over time the name for the city spread to also mean the region surrounding the city. Eventually, it even became its own politically recognized region.
But, in 27ish BC, right before the time of Jesus, Herod the Great renamed the city to “Sebastia”. And while I believe that Jerome only ever uses the word Samaria in the Vulgate, Sebastia was the official Latin name. In fact, Sebastia is still the name of the village that exists in modern-day Samaria.
So, where did Herod get the name Sebastia? Well, it was actually a pretty common place name for new cities at the time. This is because it comes from the Greek word sebastos, which means “revered” or “holy”. This is just the Greek translation for the Latin word Augustus, which was what the emperor Octavian liked to call himself. So, Herod renamed the city to “Sebastia” as a sign of respect to the practice of emperor worship, seeing the emperor as “revered” and “holy”.