Although one source places the first appearance of dominoes at 1355 BC in Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt, it seems that it was not until over 2000 years later that dominoes become popular.  The sets in 1120 originate from China and have 32 tiles rather than the more common 28 tiles.  They originally only represented the possible rolls of two six-sided dice, so no blanks occurred, but some of the combinations appeared on more than one tile.  The name "Domino", however, is most likely derived from French.  "Domino" is a word that is given to both a black & white priest's hood,
and a black & white mask.

Author: Eric Libicki

References:
http://www.gamecabinet.com/rules/DominoIntro.html
http://www.worlddomino.com/history.htm