Temple is a city in Bell County, Texas, United States. Located near the county seat of Belton, Temple lies in the region referred to as Central Texas. Located off Interstate 35, Temple is 65 miles north of Austin and 34 miles south of Waco. In the 2010 Census, Temple's population was 66,102, an increase of more than 20 percent from the 2000 census. It is a "principal city" in the Killeen–Temple–Fort Hood Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Called the "Wildflower Capital of Texas," Temple was founded in 1881 as a railroad town. It was named in honor of Bernard Moore Temple, a civil engineer and former surveyor with the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Company who established the town. For many years it was the home of the Santa Fe Railway Company's hospital for its employees. Temple is known for its strength as a regional medical center (this is primarily due to the highly respected Scott & White Memorial Hospital). Scott & White is the largest employer in town with about ten thousand employees. With Scott & White, the Veterans' Hospital Center, and other smaller clinics, Temple is home to more physicians per capita than any other community in the nation. Temple is the site of one of two major campuses for the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. Medical students can elect to spend the full four years of medical education training or just two years of their clinical training on campus.

Texas (ⁱ/ˈtɛksəs/) (Alibamu: Teksi ) is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km²), and a growing population of 25.7 million residents.

During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesús was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in July 20, 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.