THE WOMAN ABDUCTED BY A BULL

However, it was not recognized as a continent for a long time, and it was not until 1801 that the outlines of Australia were drawn on the map. The first navigator to circumnavigate Australia and recognize it as a continent, Matthew Flinders, suggested in his report that the old name be used for the new land, and this suggestion was accepted by cartographers and geographers.

This name in all likelihood comes from the union of the Assuwa states in Asia Minor, which were conquered by the HittitesiThe Hittites were an Indo-European people from Anatolia (Asia Minor). They formed the Hittite Empire, which reached its zenith in the mid-fourteenth century BCE. around 1230 BCE. In the Luwian language, which is closely related to the Hittite language, assuwa means ‘horse’—that is, these regions could be called ‘horse country’.

The inhabitants of what would later become Greece thought the Hittite Horse Lands were the easternmost point of the known earth, and in their own way pronounced their name roughly as 'Asyvia'. Later, this name was reinterpreted in myths, the name Asia was assigned to one of Poseidon’s wives, the oceanid Asias, the image of the ancient eastern king Asius appeared in mythology, and so on.

Many people know that both continents are named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, but they do not really understand why this Florentine sailor, who arrived there later than Columbus, deserves such an honor. The thing is, for a very long time, Columbus had no idea that he had discovered the New World. During his first three expeditions, he believed that he was paving a new way to India and China, which turned out to be rich in islands. Columbus discovered Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, San Salvador, Trinidad, and other islands, and he finally reached the shores of the mainland near present-day Honduras. Still, he thought he had reached China, India, or Japan. As a result, the lands he discovered were for a long time called the West Indies, and the natives of this land are sometimes still called ‘Indians’.

Amerigo Vespucci, another well-known navigator, dispelled Columbus’s misconception and declared that these lands were the New World. His letters about new lands, first collected and published in 1507, firmly linked the name of Amerigo to the New World for the general public—all the new 'Amerigo lands' were put on the map and, thus, established in official geography. Incidentally, the name ‘Amerigo’ is a romanized form of the Germanic name Emmerich, which means 'lord'.

The story behind this one is fairly simple. The pole star, which helped navigators in the northern hemisphere to accurately determine the direction of the north, was usually found using the handle of what we know as the Big Dipper, the most recognizable constellation in the northern sky. On official Latin maps, this constellation was called Ursa Major, ‘the greater bear’.

The word ‘arctic’ comes from the Greek arctos, which means ‘bear’. No land was found there, as the North Pole turned out to be an ice-covered sea, but many centuries later a continent was found at the South Pole. It made sense to call it ‘the opposite of the Arctic’, or Antarctica.

The Greeks and Romans once referred to all of Africa as Libya, an area of the continent well known to them. The Romans used the word ‘Africa’ for the province they created on the lands of Carthage, an empire they defeated in the mid-second century BC. This area became a rather important part of the empire—it was the second-largest exporter of agricultural products to the metropolis after Egypt, and the import of African grain was a crucial thing for the poor of Rome, who received their share from this grain.

Gradually, the word ‘Africa’ replaced ‘Libya’, giving the whole continent its name. The history of this name, though, is very confusing as there are several versions of its origin. According to one, it is a self-name of the local tribe ‘Afri’. According to another popular version, the name comes from the PhoenicianiThe Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic people. Their colonies were spread all across the Mediterranean Sea. word afar, meaning ‘dust’. And for his part, Flavius JosephusiFlavius Josephus (circa 37–100 CE) was a Roman-Jewish historian and military leader. writes: ‘[T]here were many sons born to Abraham by Keturah … Apher, and Surim, and Japhran. That from Surim was the land of Assyria denominated; and that from the other two (Apher and Japhran) the country of Africa took its name.’

The official myth, adopted by the ancient civilizations in this part of the world, claimed that Europe was the name of the daughter of the Phoenician king, whom Zeus abducted in the form of a beautiful, gentle bull. The trusting princess sat on his broad back, and the bull ran to the cliff above the sea, jumped into the waves, and took the beauty far northwest to the empty lands. Most likely, the name really comes from the Phoenician word ereb, or from the Semitic ərā̊b ib, or from the Akkadian êrêb šamši. All these words and word combinations are related and mean ‘sunset’ or ‘west’. In modern Hebrew, evening is also called erev.