How Were The Continents Named?
I’m sitting on my comfy recliner with my grandson fast asleep on me. I’m half-asleep, half-awake. In front of me on the floor is a play mat with the map of the world on it. It’s slightly annoying because it has Africa, Europe and Asia on the left-hand side which is repeated on the right-hand side. Luckily there is only one America in the middle. How am I going to teach my grandson about the world? There’s only one Australia! I might have to get to it with the scissors!
So I’m looking at the continents and thinking I wonder how they got their names. I mean I know how Australia got its name — well sort of. It was referred to as Terra Australis — Latin for Southern Land. I think it was Matthew Flinders, one of my favourite explorers, who circumnavigated our continent and marked it as Australia on a hand-drawn map.
And I know America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer who proposed that the lands that Christopher Columbus sailed to in 1492 were part of a separate continent. Clever, eh?
But what about Europe, Asia and Africa? Who named them? Was it the people who lived there? Or was it the explorers who traded there?
Then I started thinking about countries. How did they get their names? Well, some were named by the colonists who colonised them? Some simply had New inserted in front of a place Europeans were familiar with. Oh, this is a very deep rabbit hole. Maybe I can write a thesis next time I’m napping the baby?
