John 12:20 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And there were certain Greeks— After the conquest of Darius by Alexander, all his successors of different nations were called Greeks, whence came the name of "the Grecian monarchy," otherwise called "the Syro-Macedonian." Thus Antiochus Epiphanes is said to have reigned in the hundred and thirty-seventh year of the kingdom of the Greeks, Malachi 1:10a 1:10. St. Paul likewise often distinguishes all other nations from the Jews by the name of Greeks, Romans 1:16; Romans 2:9; Romans 10:12 and the greater part of Syria was, in our Saviour's time, called Greece by the Jews. Hence, when he was in the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and a woman besought him to cast the evil spirit out of her daughter, she is called a Greek, a Syro-phoenicean by nation, Mark 7:26 and these Greeks who were desirous to see Jesus, were probably of the same nation, and known to Philip, who is here said to have been a native of Bethsaida in Galilee, a neighbouring country, for which reason they might particularlyapply themselves to him. As all the Gentiles were thus named by the Jews Ελληνες, it denoted their religion, rather than their country; but in the present instance, the persons called Greeks were not idolatrous Gentiles; for their business at the feast, which was to worship, shews that they were proselytes to the Jewish religion, and that they cherished expectations of the Messiah. See Acts 2:5; Acts 8:27; Acts 13:43.