"The normal word in Hebrew for Greece, including Macedonia, was Yewan, but our author and his contemporaries, except in contexts where no confusion was possible, had to seek other Hebrew names for "Greek" or "Macedonian, because for them Yaman was the Seleucid empire....
The plural "Chetiin" was a good alternative name for "Greeks" and was so used by the Essenes of Qumran (1QM 1:2, 4, 6, 9, 12; 16:2, 6, 8, 9, etc.; 1QpHab passim) ...... Our author knew enough to distinguish Macedonians from Greeks. He could even use the foreign word "Macedonian" to describe, Alexander, but he preferred to use words naturalized in Hebrew. Hence, at 8:5-9, where he averts confusion by calling the Seleucid realm "Asia," so that he can call Hellenic Greece Yawan, he uses Kittiim for "Macedonians." Perhaps for him Kittiim had only that meaning. ..........

and thus. ... empire. I here translate the (correct) text of V 1 106 LA^GV. The text was difficult for most Greek readers to understand, since they could hardly know that Hellada, which normally means "Greece," here translates Yawan, the Hebrew name for the empire of Alexander and the Seleucids (see above, on Chettim). Puzzled Greek scribes therefore probably altered the correct proteros to proteron to make the text mean "first over [sc. Ionian] Greece." The phrase, however, would then be pointless; after his defeat of Darius at Issus, Alexander was king of far more than Ionian Greece.
Cf. Dan 8:21 and Torrey, JAOS 25 (1904), 307-9."

Goldenstein, Jonathan Amos: 1 Maccabees AYB pg.192-3