A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century,

signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and
Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast withByzantium and Islam, and limited to
northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and
northern and central Italy.[17]The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian
Renaissance: "Europa" often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.[18] This
divisionas much cultural as geographicalwas used until the Late Middle Ages, when it was
challenged by the Age of Discovery.[19][20][why?] The problem of redefining Europe was finally resolved in
1730 when, instead of waterways, the Swedish geographer and cartographer von
Strahlenberg proposed the Ural Mountains as the most significant eastern boundary, a suggestion
that found favour in Russia and throughout Europe.[21]
Europe is now generally defined by geographers as the western part of Eurasia, with its boundaries
marked by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the far east are
usually taken to be the Urals, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the southeast, including
the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean Sea.[22]

Depiction of Europa regina ('Queen Europe') in 1582.

Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Icelandis generally
considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North
America. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural
differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is usually considered part of Europe
both culturally and politically and currently is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an
island of North Africa for centuries.[23]
The geographic boundary drawn between Europe and Asia in 1730 follows no international
boundaries. As a result, attempts to organise Europe along political or economic lines have resulted
in uses of the name in a geopolitically limiting way[24] to refer only to the 28 member states of
the European Union. Conversely, Europe has also been used in a very expansive way by
the Council of Europe which has 47 member countries,[25] some of which territorially over-reach the

Ural and Bosphorus lines to include all of Russia and Turkey. In addition, people in the British
Isles may refer to "continental" or "mainland" Europe as Europe.[26]

Etymology

Europa and the bull on a Greek vase. Tarquinia Museum, c. 480 BC

In classical Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess whom Zeusabducted after
assuming the form of a dazzling white bull. He took her to the island of Crete where she gave birth
to Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. For Homer, Europe (Ancient Greek: , Eurp; see
also List of Greek place names) was a mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation.
The etymology of Europe is uncertain.[27] One theory suggests that it is derived from the Greek
(eurus), meaning "wide, broad"[28] and /-/- (ps/p-/opt-), meaning "eye, face,
countenance",[29] hence Eurp, "wide-gazing", "broad of aspect" (compare
with glaukpis ( 'grey-eyed') Athena or bopis ( 'ox-eyed') Hera). Broad has been
an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructedProto-Indo-European religion.[30] Another theory
suggests that it is based on aSemitic word such as the Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down,
set"[31] (in reference to the sun), cognate to Phoenician 'ereb "evening; west" and Arabic Maghreb,
Hebrew ma'arav (see also Erebus, PIE *h1regos, "darkness"). Martin Litchfield Weststates that
"phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor".
[32]

However,Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department,

finds the mention of the word Erebon an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night", "[the country of]
sunset", in opposition to Asu "[the country of] sunrise", i.e. Asia (Anatolia coming equally from
, "(sun)rise", "east").[33] In the Homeric Hymns written in the seventh century BC,Eurp still
represents, the western shore of the Aegean Sea.
Whatever the origin of the name of the mythological figure, is first used as a geographical
term in the 6th century BC, by Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus.
Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern

Rioni) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BC.[34] But the
convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman
eraused by Roman era authors such as Posidonius,[35] Strabo[36] and Ptolemy,[37] who took
the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary.

The Lady of Vina, neolithic pottery fromSerbia

The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th
century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church, as
opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world. The modern convention,
enlarging the area of "Europe" somewhat to the east and the southeast, develops in the 19th
century.[citation needed]
Most major world languages use words derived from "Europa" to refer to the continent. Chinese, for
example, uses the word uzhu (/); a similar Chinese-derived term sh ( ) is also
?

sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, sh
Reng ( ), despite the katakana Yroppa ( ) being more commonly used.
?

However, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan (land of the Franks) is
used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa.[38]

History