Etymology
The Afroasiatic language family was originally referred to as "Hamito-Semitic", a term introduced in the 1860s by the German scholar Karl Richard Lepsius. The name was later popularized by Friedrich Müller in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (Wien 1876-88).
The term "Afroasiatic" (often now spelled as "Afro-Asiatic") was later coined by Maurice Delafosse (1914). However, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg (1963) formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the fact that Afroasiatic was the only language family that was represented transcontinentally, in both Africa and Asia.
Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972). In lieu of "Hamito-Semitic", the Russian linguist Igor Diakonoff later suggested the term "Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference to the geographic distribution of the phylum's constituent languages.
The term "Hamito-Semitic" remains in use in the academic traditions of some European countries.
Read more about this topic: Afroasiatic Languages
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