List of continent name etymologies

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This is a list of the etymologies of continent names.

1 Africa
2 America
3 Antarctica
4 Asia
5 Australia
6 Europe
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Africa

The ancient Romans used the name Africa terra --- "land of the Afri" (plural, or "Afer" singular) --- for the northern part of the continent that corresponds to modern-day Tunisia. The origin of Afer may be the Phoenician afar, dust; the Afridi tribe, who dwelt in Northern Africa around the area of Carthage; Greek aphrike, without cold; or Latin aprica, sunny.

The name Africa --that was originally used by the Romans to refer to present-day Tunisia only-- began to be stretched to encompass a larger area when the provinces of Tripolitania, Numidia and Mauretania Caesaria were subdued to the Diocesis of Africa, following the administrative restructuring of Diocletian. Later, when Justinian I reconquered lands of the former West Roman Empire, all the regions from the Chelif River to the Gulf of Sidra were annexed to the Byzantine Empire as the "Exarchate of Africa".

During the Middle Ages, as the Europeans increased their knowledge and awareness of the size of the African continent, they progressively extended the name of Africa to the rest of the continent.

[edit] America

So-named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who styled himself Americus Vespucius in Latin), who, following his four voyages to the Americas, first developed the idea that the newly discovered western lands were in fact a continent. In recognition thereof, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller named the new continent after the Italian explorer's first name. Amerigo Vespucci was named after Saint Americus of Hungary. (See also Naming of America.)

A few alternative theories regarding the continent's naming have been proposed, but none of them have any widespread acceptance. One alternative first proposed by a Bristol antiquary and naturalist, Alfred Hudd, was that America is derived from Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol, England who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of discovery to Newfoundland in 1497. Waldseemüller's maps appear to incorporate information from the early British journeys to North America. The theory holds that a variant of Amerike's name appeared on an early British map (of which however no copies survive) and that this was the true inspiration for Waldseemüller. (See more at Richard Amerike).

One antique map shows the continent labelled "North America or Mexicana" and "South America or Peruana".

[edit] Antarctica

Originally from Greek antarktikos, from anti + arktikos "Arctic". Literally "opposite the Arctic". Arktikos comes from Arktos, the Greek name for the constellation of the Great Bear Ursa Major, visible only in the Northern Hemisphere.

[edit] Asia

It originally was just a name for the east bank of the Aegean Sea, an area known to the Hittites as Assuwa. In early Classical times, the Greeks started using the term "Asia" to refer to the whole region known today as Anatolia (the peninsula which forms the Asian portion of present-day Turkey). Eventually, however, the name had been stretched progressively further east, until it came to encompass the much larger land area with which we associate it today, while the Anatolian Peninsula started being called "The Lesser Asia" instead.

The etymology of Asia can only be guessed at. The following two possibilities have been suggested:

It could have originated from the Aegean root "Asis" which means "muddy and silty" as a description of the eastern shores of the Aegean Sea.
It could derive from the borrowed Semitic root "Asu", which means varyingly "rising" or "light", of course a directional referring to the sunrise, Asia thus meaning 'Eastern Land'.

However, since the Greek name Asia (Ασία) is in all likelihood related to Hittite Assuwa, the etymology of one has to account for the other as well.

[edit] Australia

The name Australia is derived from the Latin Australis, meaning of the South. Legends of an "unknown land of the south" (terra australis incognita) date back to the Roman times and were commonplace in mediaeval geography, but they were not based on any actual knowledge of the continent.

[edit] Europe

The term Europe referred once to only a small land area, roughly that part of Thrace (Trakya in Turkish) that is now part of Turkey. Through the centuries however, it came to denote the whole land mass with which we are familiar today.

The name Europe derives from Europa, probably a compound meaning "broad-faced" (referring to the Earth), eurus (PIE *wer-, "broad") meaning "broad" and ōps (PIE *okw-, "eye") meaning "face". A less likely possibility is that it derives from the ancient Sumerian and Semitic root "Ereb", which carries the meaning of "darkness" or "descent", a reference to the region's western location in relation to Mesopotamia, the Levantine Coast, Anatolia, and the Bosporus. Thus the term would have meant the 'land of the setting of the Sun' or, more generically, 'Western land'.

In Greek mythology Europa was the beautiful daughter of a Phoenician king named Agenor, or Phoenix. As Zeus saw her, he transformed himself into a gentle white bull and approached her and her playing friends. She climbed onto the bull's back and it began so swim off to Crete, where she fell in love with the then-changed-back Zeus and had three sons with him (Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon, the first two of which constitute, together with Aeacus, the three judges of the underworld).