In western languages, "essence" comes from "existence". In Greek (the earliest philosophical language), the neutral present participle of einai(to be) is to be, and ousia is the negative present participle of einai. Aristotle defined it as "tiesti"-"What is it" and "To Ti en Einai"-"What is it". Therefore, ousia has at least one meaning, which is what we now call "essence", but Aristotle has not defined the concept of "essence".
The philosophical concept in Latin is basically the translation of Greek (with the help of a master), but it is very similar in language structure (which may be the characteristic of Indo-European language family), and essentia also comes from esse(to be). Before his death, Mr. Miao Tianli tried to invent a new word for English: Being Sex as the English translation of ousia, because English nouns have no sexual change, but the suffix -LITY can have a negative meaning. The "essence" of German is wesen, which also comes from "existence": gewesen and Sein's past perfect tense, with the prefix removed, is Wesen, so Hegel joked that the existence in the past is the essence when making category deduction.
When did the concepts of "essence" and "phenomenon" form a pair of philosophical concepts? It is difficult to trace back ideologically, but the emergence of this concept can be explained. In Kant's philosophy, there are two pairs of related concepts: the "appearance" of things and things themselves, and phenomena and Noumena. Judging from Kant's two pairs of concepts, the phenomenon opposite to essence should be appearance, not phenomenology.
We always say "essence" and "phenomenon". Who first used this pair of concepts? It should be Hegel. Our thought about "essence" comes from Marx and Engels, while Marx and Engels come from Hegel. Hegel used the concepts of essence and phenomenon in logic, and "phenomenon" used Erscheinung.