# origin of "Europe", "Caucasian **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 10, 2000, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558 "2000-03-10T20:40:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mazinger-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@mazinger-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mazinger-z)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2000, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/1 "2000-03-10T20:40:00Z")
I know that Africa and Asia used to be Roman provinces, and I assume that they gave their names to the continents they were on, but what about Europe? When exactly did Europe come to be called “Europe,” and where did that name come from? On a related topic, I would also like to know where the term “Caucasian” came from. I checked in the dictionary, and it mentioned that the Caucasus region was where the first white man was supposedly sighted, but it didn’t give any more details. How about some help? * * * Pretend this has Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem ‘We Real Cool’ here, 'coz it’s got too many lines to fit comfortably (too bad, it’s my favourite poem). ---
**Author:** ![Alphagene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Alphagene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alphagene)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2000, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/2 "2000-03-10T21:27:00Z")
From EB: > [@](#): > > “Europa,” as the more learned of the ancient Greeks first conceived it, stood in sharp contrast to both Asia and Libya, the name then applied to the known northern part of Africa. Literally, “Europa” is now thought to have meant “Mainland,” rather than the earlier interpretation, “Sunset.” ## The Caucasus region is located between the Black and Caspian seas. The Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan area. **Gypsy** : Tom, I don’t get you. **Tom Servo** : Nobody does. I’m the wind, baby. ---
**Author:** ![Alphagene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Alphagene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alphagene)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2000, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/3 "2000-03-10T21:31:00Z")
Hell, if you really want detail: > [@](#): > > The name Caucasus is a Latinized form of Kaukasos … The ultimate derivation is thought to be from Kaz-kaz, the Hittite name for a people living on the southern shore of the Black Sea. ---
**Author:** ![Ursa\_Major](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a88e57/32.png) [@Ursa\_Major](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ursa_Major)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2000, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/4 "2000-03-10T21:35:00Z")
I thought Europa was one of Zeus’ many rape victims. I recall a story of Zeus taking the form of a bull and chasing her all the way from Greece to the Atlantic (giving the land she crossed its name). Anyway, Zues caught her, knocked her up and the resulting offspring was King Minos of Crete. ---
**Author:** ![Boris\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@Boris\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boris_B)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2000, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/5 "2000-03-11T05:17:00Z")
I think “caucasian”, as it is _most commonly_ used, is a corruption of Caucasoid. White people as a whole were referred to as the Caucasoid Race since Caucasians typified the race. That is, every Caucasoid ethnic group should look more or less like Caucasians, even if they didn’t look much like each other. Scottsmen don’t look much like Hindustanis, but the Caucasians are in between, so to speak. The “three race” system has fallen out of favor. Nobody calls Vietnamese, or Japanese, or Malays “Mongoloid people” any more. Least not out loud. Ditto for the “Negroid Race”, which contained teensy Bushmen, towering Tutsis, and straight-haired Ethiopians. I’m just pointing out that it wasn’t really proper in the old anthropological taxonomy to call any body caucasian, except folks from the Caucasus. (The racial definition has made into the dictionary, though. It’s just not “anthropologically correct”.) * * * What part of “I don’t know” don’t you understand? ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2000, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/6 "2000-03-11T05:54:00Z")
This is according to my Islam professor: “Europe” comes from a Semitic word meaning “evening.” I’m not sure which language directly contributed the word, but the Hebrew word for evening is _erev_. The sun sets in the west, and since Europe is to the west of lands in which Semitic languages are spoken, it was named after the evening. * * * ~Harborina “Don’t Do It.” ---
**Author:** ![Alphagene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Alphagene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alphagene)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2000, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/7 "2000-03-11T08:04:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Zeus taking the form of a bull and chasing her all the way from Greece to the Atlantic (giving the land she crossed its name). EB says she was chased from Phoenecia (now Syria and Lebanon) to Crete. Kyla, I guess that is the “sunset” meaning that EB says has fallen out of favor. * * * **Gypsy** : Tom, I don’t get you. **Tom Servo** : Nobody does. I’m the wind, baby. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2000, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/8 "2000-03-12T06:22:00Z")
I asked a question very similar to this a while back. FYI, here is that thread: [http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003001.html](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003001.html) ---
**Author:** ![mazinger-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@mazinger-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mazinger-z)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2000, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/9 "2000-03-12T03:10:00Z")
Thank you, Great Hammer, for the answer to my Europe question. What I wanted to know from the Caucasian question was the details of the story about the first white man. Who sighted him? Is it some kind of myth? As always, your help (meaning all of you) is appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![mazinger-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@mazinger-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mazinger-z)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2000, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/10 "2000-03-12T03:13:00Z")
I forgot to add, no one answered me about when Europe started to be called Europe. Sometime in the First Millenium, say the latter half? Is that a close guess? * * * Pretend this has Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem ‘We Real Cool’ here, 'coz it’s got too many lines to fit comfortably (too bad, it’s my favourite poem). ---
**Author:** ![ASPA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b19c9b/32.png) [@ASPA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASPA)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2000, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/11 "2000-03-15T01:28:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Kyla: > \*\*This is according to my Islam professor: > > “Europe” comes from a Semitic word meaning “evening.” I’m not sure which language directly contributed the word, but the Hebrew word for evening is _erev_. The sun sets in the west, and since Europe is to the west of lands in which Semitic languages are spoken, it was named after the evening. > Excellent key to the origin… > \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Humbaba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Humbaba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humbaba)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/12 "2012-12-19T06:50:36Z")
Comes from the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian Seas. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/13 "2012-12-19T07:29:12Z")
> [@Humbaba](#): > > Comes from the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian Seas. Yes, we cleared that up twelve years ago. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Anaglyph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Anaglyph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaglyph)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/14 "2012-12-19T07:29:24Z")
See [this thread](http://www.historum.com/ancient-history/25705-whats-name-etymology-europa.html) in the HISTORUM history discussion forum for the different theories that lead to “Europa”. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/15 "2012-12-19T08:46:33Z")
[Christoph Meiners theorized](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race) in 1785 that there were two racial categories, Caucasian & Mongolian; he named the ones he considered attractive Caucasians–with everybody else Mongolians. [Johan Friedrich Blumenbach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Blumenbach) expanded the racial classifications to the ones that remained for a very long time. His definition of _varietas Caucasia_… > [@](#): > > I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind. Yes, I used Wikipedia; but I’d remembered Blumenbach’s reason for the name. Science has left his theories behind–but he actually believed that members of all races were capable of excellence, making him less “racist” than many who came after him. Europe? I know the myth but don’t have a clue as to how it came to describe what [Barry Cunliffe](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300170866/ref=rdr_ext_tmb) calls > [@](#): > > …a relatively minor peninsula attached to the Eurasian land mass. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/16 "2012-12-19T09:43:27Z")
My daughter, who goes to high school with a lot of Armenian (well, Armenian-American) kids, tells me that they vehemently deny that Armenians are Caucasians. As Armenia is slap bang in the Caucasus, my first thought was that what they really meant to deny was that they are Europeans, but it seems that, on certain quite widely accepted conceptions of the boundaries of Europe, Armenia is (just about) in Europe, too. My best guess is that what they really mean to say is that they are not Anglos. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/17 "2012-12-19T10:53:45Z")
I really don’t get why American people call white Europeans Caucasian when most actual people from the Caucasian mountains look Eurasian Besides, what’s so bad about calling someone White or European ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/18 "2012-12-19T13:08:02Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > I really don’t get why American people call white Europeans Caucasian when most actual people from the Caucasian mountains look Eurasian > > Besides, what’s so bad about calling someone White or European Well, white people aren’t “white”, either. It’s just a convention. Lots of things about language aren’t logical. Zombies, OTOH, are often white. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/19 "2012-12-19T13:27:30Z")
Reminds me of the opening monologue from when Charlize Theron hosted Saturday Night Live. Tracy Morgan: _“You live here, but you was born in Africa?”_ Charlize Theron: _“Yes, that’s right.”_ Tracy Morgan: _“Hmm… so you’re… you’re African-American?”_ Charlize Theron: _“Wow! I guess I am! I… I… I never thought of it that way…”_ Tracy Morgan: _“Well, you better start thinking of it that way!”_ (He offers her a Newport, she produces her pack of Kools . . . _“Damn, it’s about time they let a sister host this show!”_) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558/20 "2012-12-19T13:51:59Z")
Since this thread first appeared, Nell Irvin Painter brought out her blockbuster [The History of White People](http://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355923370&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+white+people). Caucasian as a term for white people came about in the late 18th century. [Etymonline.com](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=caucasian&searchmode=none): > [@](#): > > ``` > 1807, from Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian seas; applied to the "white" race 1795 (in German) by German anthropologist Johann Blumenbach, because its supposed ancestral homeland lay there; since abandoned as a historical/anthropological term. > > ``` [Etymonline.com](http://Etymonline.com) names a different coiner than Bridget Burke does, but the idea’s the same. Both cases are examples of the Europeans’ increased preoccupation with race and racial distinctions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nothing new, but now covered with a veneer of science. What really gets the word out, literally, is that Caucausian women - here referring to the location - start being mythologized as white slave girls, taken by the Arabs to their harems because of their great beauty. Jean-Baptiste Chaplin writes of the province Georgia in 1689: > [@](#): > > The blood of Georgia is the most beautiful in the Orient, & I would have to say in the world, for I’ve never noticed an ugly face of either sex in this country and some are downright Angelic. Nature has endowed most of the women with graces not to be seen in any other place. I have to say it is impossible to look at them without falling in love with them. No more charming faces and no more lovely figures than those of the Georgians could serve to inspire painters. They are tall, graceful, slender, and poised, and even though they don’t wear many cloths, you never see bulges. Putting the most beautiful and desirable women in the world in the ancestral home of Europe had obvious implications for people who had started to believe that they were the superior branch of humanity. Caucasian meant superior, and stayed that way for two centuries. BTW, the OP seemed to have confused ancestral home with first sighting of a white man. The real derivation of the word Caucasus comes is the more prosaic “white with snow.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-europe-caucasian/8558.md?page=2)