What is the etymology of Chinese tense words?
According to Wikipedia, the first Chinese's grammar《馬氏文通》is written by 馬建忠 in 1898, meaning that most likely, there was no use at all of 過去式、現在式 and 未來式 before that. Now, if we investigate a bit by searching the tenses we are interested in, we can quote:

記時之式有四：一，事成之時；二，既往之時；三，幾時之久；四，未來之時。凡此四時，類無介字為先，故亦列於賓次。

In my understanding, this states the existence of three tenses corresponding to the perfect, the past and the future.