The name Europe comes from the Latin: Europa, which in turn derives from the Greek: Εὐρώπη, from eurys "wide" and ops "face"
(PIE *wer-, "broad" *okw-, "eye").
In Greek mythology Europa was the beautiful daughter of a Phoenician king named Agenor, or Phoenix. As Zeus saw her, he transformed himself into a gentle white bull and approached her and her playing friends. She climbed onto the bull's back and it began to swim off to Crete, where she fell in love with the then-changed-back Zeus and had three sons with him (Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon, the first two of which constitute, together with Aeacus, the three judges of the underworld).
A less likely possibility proposed by Ernest Klein is that it derives from the ancient Sumerian and Semitic root "Ereb", which carries the meaning of "darkness" or "descent", a reference to the region's western location in relation to Mesopotamia, the Levantine Coast, Anatolia, and the Bosporus. Thus the term would have meant the 'land of the setting of the Sun' or, more generically, 'Western land'.
The term Europe referred once to only a small land area, roughly that part of Thrace that is now part of Turkey. Through the centuries however, it came to denote the whole land mass with which we are familiar today.
Read more about this topic: List Of Continent Name Etymologies
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“Is not our role to stand for the one thing which means our own salvation here but with which it will also be possible to save the world, and with which Europe will be able to save itself, namely the preservation of the white man and his state?”
—Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966)
“The Cold War began with the division of Europe. It can only end when Europe is whole.”
—George Bush (b. 1924)