Genesis 25:2 names him as a son of Av-Raham by Keturah. The children of Keturah were all Arabian tribes.
Gesenius claims that it comes from the root Din (דין) = "strife"; but this is the same root that gives Dan (דן) and Dinah (דינה); there is no suggestion anywhere that the Dana'ans, who were the occupants of Phoenicia and colonised most of the Mediterranean, had colonies in Mesopotamia and Arabia as well, though their Beney Chet (Hittite) forebears did.
There may be a link to Middin (מדין), a town in the plains of Yehudah which Joshua 15:61 mentions, or possibly to Madon (מדון), a royal city of the Beney Kena'an mentioned in Joshua 11:1 and 12:19.
Much more likely though is that Medan is an error for, or a dialect variation of, Midyan (מדין), the Midyanites of Arabia, who are linked to the Beney Yishma-El in various passages, and especially in the story of the selling of Yoseph. Genesis 37:36 even writes Midyanites as Medanites (מדני), which makes for further evidence.
The same root gives Medinah (מדינה), famously the city in Arabia to which Muhammad fled from Mecca; though that city was properly called Yatrib, and only became Medinah when the Prophet's name was attached to it: Medinat an-Nabi, the "City of the Prophet". Medinah simply means "city". The name came to mean "land" or "nation" or "province" in Yehudit.
The final suggestion that has been made by Bible scholars is that it links to Medea (Maday - מדי), the name of the land and people from whom came the Medes, conquerors of Bavel (Babylon) and liberators of the Beney Yehudah in the 6th century BCE. But the lateness of this date is incongruous with the remainder of the Keturah list, and can therefore probably be discounted, except as an anachronism.
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