Asian Countries vocabulary
Expand your vocabulary and practice
Asian Countries exercise (Multiple choice)
Asian Countries exercise
Information or Use Cases (Usage examples)
The idea of a place called "Asia" was originally a concept of Greek civilization, though this might not correspond to the entire continent currently known by that name. The English word comes from Latin literature, where it has the same form, "Asia". Whether "Asia" in other languages comes from Latin of the Roman Empire is much less certain, and the ultimate source of the Latin word is uncertain, though several theories have been published. One of the first classical writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny.
This metonymical change in meaning is common and can be observed in some other geographical names, such as Scandinavia (from Scania).
Latin Asia and Greek Ἀσία appear to be the same word. Roman authors translated Ἀσία as Asia. The Romans named a province Asia, located in western Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey).