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Why name it Europe?

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    Posted: 29-Sep-2004 at 19:52
Why is it called Europe? Also who named it such and when?

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  Quote Tobodai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2004 at 19:54
yeah and why is it considered a different continent than Asia, using that logic India should be a continent too.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2004 at 19:57
Thats exactly why I am asking.
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  Quote JanusRook Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2004 at 20:14

Isn't it named Europe after Europa in greek mythology.

Also Europe isn't a continent..its a portion of the Eurasian Continent.

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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2004 at 22:01
yeah and why is it considered a different continent than Asia, using that logic India should be a continent too.


Stricly speaking it is, or rather, its part of the same continental plate as Australia, and Arabis is seperate too.

Isn't it named Europe after Europa in greek mythology.


Not quite, both are from some Babylonian word IIRC, seting setting sun or something.
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  Quote Yiannis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 02:37

Originally posted by Cywr

[ both are from some Babylonian word IIRC, seting setting sun or something.

 

Quite so. Zeus went to Phoenicia, transformed himself into a white bull, abducted Princess Europe and took her to Crete on his back. There he changed back to human form and they mated at the beach of Gortyne. She bore three sons: Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamantos and was given a robot Talos to protect her and the island as present from Zeus. Then she married Asterius, king of Crete who adopted her children.

You can also see another picture of Zeus and Europe on the Greek 2Euro coin.

The story supposivelly symbolizes the transfer of civilization from the fertile plateu in Asia to the new continent, Europe.

 

The name Europi (Europe) was originally given to central Greece, then it came to reffer to all mainland Greece and then it was extended to all lands of the North and passed to other languages as well.

 



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  Quote Northman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 03:00

Yes, that story is quite well known and of course much more beautiful than the more prosaic explanation that it is derived from the word ereb from a Semitic language, meaning "sunset"  as Cywr suggests.

From the point of view from the Middle East, the sun would appear to set beyond the lands to the west. In this regard it may be significant that Eurus is also a Latin term for the East Wind.

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 05:01
Originally posted by Cywr

yeah and why is it considered a different continent than Asia, using that logic India should be a continent too.


Stricly speaking it is, or rather, its part of the same continental plate as Australia, and Arabis is seperate too.


And we will also get the beautiful continent 'Juan de Fuca' (the Island northwest of Vancouver, it has its own earth plate)
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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 09:10
Err, Yiannis, so it is or it isn't from Babylonian (or whatever)?
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  Quote Yiannis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 09:22

Not sure on the "Babylonian" part, but the word is Semitic alright.

The Greek myth names Europe to be from the coast of Phoenicia (Modern day Lebanon).

 

 

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  Quote fastspawn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 11:15
Is europe a modern name e.g. After the medieval time period?

If i do recall the pre-industrial Europeans hardly referred to themselves as Europeans, rather As "the whole of Christendom" or Chrisitian Brethern.
Before Christ, it was even more fractured, and i don't think the Europeans had any common identitly to share.
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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 14:12
Europe as a continent, like Aisa, as we know them today, didn't exist untill relativly recently, last 300 years or so.
But the names had been used to describe geographical regions, Europe was once thrace, then part of the southern Balkans, and eventualy the whole of the western Eurasian peninsular, Asia, originaly Anatolia, then the near east, and eventualy the rest of Eurasia.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 16:06
and so the conclusion is?
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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 16:17
Theres no single answer, it was once a direction, then a place, then a rough region, then a formalised continent.
So, some semetic speakers (baylonians), then Greeks, then western Europeans in general.
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  Quote Abyssmal Fiend Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 20:12

I agree with Cywr. There was never any definite name until later in Human history for any of the continents. Africa wasn't called Africa, it was part of the Caliphate at one part, so it had it's own name then. And it's own name when ruled by the individual tribes. And it's own name for damn near most of it's history. A movie, though I can't be sure how accurate it was, depicted African Slaves on a boat... the name escapes me at this time, but they didn't even have a name for the area in which they lived. They could find it, but they didn't know what to call it.

Much could be said the same to Europeans. Although, I would just assume it was the "Christian Empire" in its simplest forms.


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  Quote Evildoer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Oct-2004 at 00:02
Arabia and India should be separate continents as well, to support that plate theory of Cywr's and because of the common decency to allow completely different groups of cultures to have different continents.
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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Oct-2004 at 07:44
Continents have never been based soley on Culture.
The Philopines is its own seperate continent too, and there is a little one in Iran somewhere, Caspian plate possibly.
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  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Oct-2004 at 11:57
In Arabic "Qorub" means "Sunset" and "Qarb" means "West".
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  Quote Sharrukin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Oct-2004 at 23:57

"Europe", as used by the Greeks is quite old.  We know that Herodotus was using the name in its near-modern sense, by about 430 BC.  In his examination of the world's geography, he described Europe as having an indefinite eastern border and thus was equal in size to Africa (his "Libya") and Asia, combined. (Herodotus, Book 4,45).  His "Asia" bordered Europe at the Black Sea, the Tanais, the Caspian Sea, and the Oxus (Herodotus, Book 4, 37-40).  It is to be noted that even he did not know the origin of the names of the continents, only that they were "women's names". (Herodotus, Book 4,45). 

It was in the Roman period, when the geographies gave a more modern meaning to the idea of Europe.  Sarmatia, known by Ptolemy (c. AD 150) was divided into a "European" and an "Asiatic" section, divided by the Ural Mts. and the Ural River, which is where modern geography places the division. 

 

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Oct-2004 at 11:45

Originally posted by Cywr


The Philopines is its own seperate continent too

The Phillipine is not a continent but a collection of islands, which are still connected to the Asian landmass. The same for Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan.



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