List of continent name etymologies

The name Africa was originally used by the ancient Romans to refer to the northern part of the continent that corresponds to modern-day Tunisia. There are many theories regarding its origin.

• Africa terra means "land of the Afri" (plural, or "Afer" singular), referring to the Afri tribe, who dwelt in Northern Africa around the area of Carthage. Their name might come from Phoenician afar "dust”.
• Greek aphrike (*ἀφρίκη) "without cold".
• Latin aprica "sunny".
• Another suggestion is that the name comes from the Ancient Egyptian word afruika - which means 'turning towards the ka' or 'turning towards the birthplace' or 'motherland' of humanity.

The name "Africa" began to be stretched to encompass a larger area when the provinces of Tripolitania, Numidia and Mauretania Caesariensis 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.

The continents of North and South America (also sometimes deemed as a single continent, America, especially by many postcolonial Spanish-speaking countries) are thought to be named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who styled himself Americus Vespucius in Latin). Amerigo Vespucci was named after Saint Emeric of Hungary. Vespucci, following his four voyages exploring the coastlines of Venezuela and Brazil, first developed the idea that the newly discovered western land was in fact a continent. The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller created the earliest known map showing the name America, which he applied to the South American continent only. One later antique map labels the two landmasses "North America or Mexicana" and "South America or Peruana".

In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed that the name derives from the Amerrisque Mountains of present-day Nicaragua. In 1875, Jules Marcou suggested a derivation from indigenous American languages where "Amerrique" originally named the prominent mountain range.[20] Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and ... the [suffixes] can mean ... a spirit that breathes, life itself."[21] In this view, native speakers shared this indigenous word with Columbus and members of his crew, and Columbus made landfall in the vicinity of these mountains on his fourth voyage.[20][21] The name America then spread via oral means throughout Europe relatively quickly even reaching the cartographer Waldseemüller who was preparing a map of newly reported lands for publication in 1507.[21] Waldseemüller's work in the area of denomination takes on a different aspect in this view: The baptismal passage in the Cosmographiae Introductio has commonly been read as argument, in which the author said that he was naming the newly discovered continent in honor of Vespucci and saw no reason for objections. But, as etymologist Joy Rea has suggested, it could also be read as an explanation, in which he indicates that he has heard the New World was called America, and the only explanation lay in Vespucci's name.[21] Among the reasons which proponents give in adopting this theory include the recognition of “the simple fact that place names usually originate informally in the spoken word and first circulate that way, not in the printed word.”[21][22] In addition, Waldseemüller not only is exonerated from the charge of having arrogated to himself the privilege of naming lands, which privilege was reserved to monarchs and actual explorers, but also is freed from the charge of violating the long-established and virtually inviolable ancient European tradition of using only the first name of royal individuals as opposed to the last name of commoners (such as Vespucci) in bestowing names to lands.[20]

An alternative theory was proposed by the local Bristol antiquarian Alfred Hudd who proposed that the word America had evolved from Amerike or ap Meryk, based on a lost manuscript which he claimed to have seen. Alfred Hudd was an aristocrat who belonged to the Clifton Antiquarian Club of Bristol, founded in 1884 to arrange meetings and excursions for the study of objects of archaeological interest in the West of England and South Wales. He also collected butterflies, was a naturalist and member of the Bristol Naturalists' Society. Hudd proposed that the word "America" was originally applied to a destination across the western ocean, possibly an island or a fishing station in Newfoundland. After the king of Denmark and ruler of Iceland had cut off trade for fish, England sent out expeditions to find new sources. Hudd suggested Amerike's sponsorship made his name known in Bristol in association with the North American destinations prior to other mapmaking or voyages. The writer Jonathan Cohen noted he made a conjectural leap to reach that conclusion, and no extant evidence supports it.[1] In the 21st century, the scholar John Davies briefly mentioned the story as a kind of Welsh patriot piece.[2]

The word Antarctica comes from Greek antarktikos (ἀνταρκτικός), from anti (ἀντί) and arktikos (ἀρκτικός) "Arctic". Literally "opposite to the Arctic (opposite to the North)".[3][4][5] Arktikos comes from Arktos, the Greek name for the constellation of the Great Bear Ursa Major, visible only in the Northern Hemisphere, which comes from the ancient Greek word ἄρκτος (Greek: [ˈarktos]), which means "bear".[6]

The word Asia originated from the Ancient Greek word Ἀσία,[7] first attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BCE) in reference to Anatolia or to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt.

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). The Roman Empire referred to the entire Lydian region of what is now northwestern Turkey as the province of Asia. 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 "Asia Minor" or "The Lesser Asia" instead.

The deeper root of the etymology 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 is in all likelihood related to Hittite Assuwa, the etymology of one has to account for the other as well.

Personified in Greek mythology by the deity of the same name.

The word Australia means "Southern Land" in New Latin, adapted from the legendary pseudo-geographical Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land") dating back to the Roman era. First appearing as a corruption of the Spanish name for an island in Vanuatu in 1625,[8] "Australia" was slowly popularized following the advocacy of the British explorer Matthew Flinders in his 1814 description of his circumnavigation of the island.[9] Lachlan Macquarie, a Governor of New South Wales, used the word in his dispatches to England and recommended it be formally adopted by the Colonial Office in 1817.[10] The Admiralty agreed seven years later and the continent became officially known as Australia in 1824.[11]

The name Europe comes from the Latin Europa, which in turn derives from the Greek Εὐρώπη, from εὐρύς eurys "wide" and ὤψ ops "face"[12] (PIE *wer-, "broad" *okw-, "eye"). In Greek mythology, Europa was the beautiful daughter of a Phoenician king named Agenor or Phoenix. When Zeus saw her, he transformed himself into a bull and approached her and her playing friends. She climbed onto the bull's back and it swam off to Crete, where she had three sons with it (Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon, the first two of which constitute, together with Aeacus, the three judges of the underworld).

Another possibility, proposed by Ernest Klein, 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", but that possibility is out of the question since the “Western land” for Mesopotamia was the land of Canaan, or the land of the Phoenicians, not the sea or Europe.

Another possibility is that the name comes from the old Phoenician yurup which means “where the sun sets”, because this is the place where the sun sets in the west with respect to Phoenicia. A similar word in a later semitic language is “غُروب” in Arabic.

The word Oceania comes from the English word ocean for 'a large body of water'. It is ultimately derived from Greek Ὠκεανός (Okeanos),[13] the great river or sea surrounding the disk of the Earth. Personified, in Greek Mythology, as Oceanus, son of Uranus and Gaia and husband of Tethys.

• Toponymy
• Etymology
• Onomatology
• List of country name etymologies
• Lists of etymologies
• List of river name etymologies

• Map of Selected Placename Etymologies in the Americas, from www.radicalcartography.net