Mass as a scientific term was introduced by Newton as a measure of the amount of substance, before that, naturalists operated with the concept of weight. In the work "Mathematical principles of natural philosophy" (1687) Newton first defined the "amount of matter" in a physical body as the product of its density and volume. He further indicated that he would use the term mass in the same sense. Finally, Newton introduced mass into the laws of physics: first into Newton's second law (through the amount of motion), and then into the law of gravity, from which it immediately follows that weight is proportional to mass. Newton clearly pointed out this proportionality and even tested it on experience with all possible accuracy in those years: "Mass is determined by the weight of the body, because it is proportional to the weight, which I found by experiments on pendulums produced in the most accurate way" (these experiments Newton described in detail in volume III of his "Principles")
The etymology (origin) of the term "mass" (lat. Massa, from the other-Greek. μαζα) originally in ancient times meant a piece of dough. Later, the meaning of this word expanded, and it came to mean a whole, unprocessed piece of arbitrary matter; in this sense, the word is used, for example, in Ovid and Pliny.
Consider how the concept of "mass" changed in the XX century. So in the school textbook for the sixth grade for 1960, the following definition of mass is given.
"The amount of substance contained in a body is called the mass of that body."
As can be seen from this definition of mass, it was not even associated with inertia, but this does not mean anything, since children at that time were given knowledge in stages, just the inertial properties of mass were reflected in high school. In the sixth grade, they very strongly drew the children's attention only to the quantitative nature of mass, and in the sixth grade, they did not give the children such a concept as "inertia", which was given later. Here is a quote from a 1960 school textbook.
"So the mass of a loaf of bread is greater than the mass of a slice of bread, and the mass of a larger piece of sugar is greater than the mass of a smaller piece. A liter of water contains a thousand times more substance than a cubic centimeter of water and weighs a thousand times more than a cubic centimeter of water. In short, the weight and mass of bodies made of the same substance, the greater the volumes of these bodies.