My cousin is doing a map of "middle east" for school. I never understood why it was called the middle east. i mean its southwest asia not "middle east"
the previous 2 answers are correct , but at the same time the also the way the word Orient was coined into English terminology from French . Originally Orient in the old days meant direction or center path (not East), but consider that a European travels east to get to what was the middle of the map then (900~1000 years ago) so when they coined it in English they couldn’t say Middle Center (sounds awkward) , and since the word Orient was synonymous with east , Orient was then taken to mean east in English despite it not being the original old meaning.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
From the viewpoint of Europeans there is a Far East (China, Japan, etc) and there is a Middle East – it is also east from Europe, but not so far as Far East. So they called it Middle East. Sonds simple and funny but it is true.
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December 29th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
It is from the west’s point of view.
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Emartiya we 3aribiya
December 30th, 2009 at 12:22 am
the previous 2 answers are correct , but at the same time the also the way the word Orient was coined into English terminology from French . Originally Orient in the old days meant direction or center path (not East), but consider that a European travels east to get to what was the middle of the map then (900~1000 years ago) so when they coined it in English they couldn’t say Middle Center (sounds awkward) , and since the word Orient was synonymous with east , Orient was then taken to mean east in English despite it not being the original old meaning.
References :