> There was a rather documented political context back then, of erasing the local name to crush the local population.

I don't know of any emperor who renamed provinces as retribution. Do you have any examples?

> I do find it odd the Romans used two names when switching 'Judea' to 'Syria-Palestine'.

Syria was a greater region back then and contained many provinces. See the Wikipedia map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coele_Syria_(Roman_province)#/...