Orient

The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term Occident, which refers to the Western world. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the continent of Asia – loosely classified into Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and sometimes including the Caucasus. Originally, the term Orient was used to designate only the Near East, but later its meaning evolved and expanded, designating also Central Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, or the Far East. The term oriental is often used to describe objects (or, archaically, people) from the Orient. Etymology The term "Orient" derives from the Latin word oriens, meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior " rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogues from many languages: compare the terms "Arevelk" in (Armenian Arevelk means "East" or "Sunrise"), "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Vostok" (< Russian voskhod "sunrise"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" (< Arabic "rise", "rising"), "shygys" (< Kazakh shygu "come out"), (< Turkish doğmak to be born; to rise), "xavar" (meaning east), (, a pictograph of the sun rising behind a tree) and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan. In Arabic, the Mashriq literally means "the sunrise", "the east", the name is derived from the verb sharaqa ( "to shine, illuminate, radiate" and "to rise"), from sh-r-q root (ش-ر-ق), referring to the east, where the sun rises. Historically, the Mashriq was the southern part of the Eastern Roman Empire.