Europe and Europa
George R. Stewart
1961
Names
A LONG PERIOD speculation has been rife about the origin of the name Europe. One must write "speculation" rather than "scholarship" because dearth of material has made a scholarly approach extremely difficult. As a result, only one article on the subject can be cited, and we are otherwise dependent upon paragraphs in encyclopedias and statements in general works. To collect and to review all these opinions would demand some pages of text, and would in the end prove to be little more than a
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... lation of guesses. The writer therefore begs the acceptance of his statement that he has consulted a large number of these brief notices and considers nearly ap of them to be of no value, and those which may contain some possible value to be lacking in scholarly demonstration. 1 The writer intends here an approach which is to some extent new, though in the end he will support one of the old theories. * * * Before the demonstration can begin, there must be some presentation of the early history of the name. This can well work backward from a .passage in Herodotus (iv, 42-45, partly quoted below) 1 The article is that by Hans Phillip, "Die Namen der Erdteile Europa, Asien und Afrika" (Petermanns Mitteilungen, v.82, 109-110). This I consider to be of no value, and in its suppression of pertinent evidence to be positively misleading. It tries to establish by a strained interpretation of Herodotus, viii, 8, that he believed EuroPe to refer to Thrace only, but does not cite Herodotus, iv, 42-45, which makes clear that Europe includes the whole continent. Doubtless this article, which is cited, accounts for Adolf Bach's positive statement (Deutsche Namenkunde, 2, 497) that Europe was originally the name of the Thracian coastland. Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow, 1905, v. 1, pp. 246-247), originally published in 1613, shows that theories about the name were already current. As a selected list of brief notes and passing comments, I cite: M.
doi:10.1179/nam.1961.9.2.79
fatcat:zggrlj72uzaenmjb7jn7mtirey