Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
The answers to your primary and secondary questions: it’s political.
Iran calls itself “west Asia” specifically to be contrarian to the Western vernacular. That, and “middle east” is a Roman thing (as is Asia) and Iranians are still a bit put out by the Persian empire falling to Greece and Rome. Most Iranians identify as Persian and consider Iran a Western political entity they’re stuck with but that doesn’t define them.
You know how there’s people in the southern US that live as though the Confederates never lost and they want to hold on to their history and culture? Persians are much more that way.
Who else advocates for “West Asia”? Is it just Iran?
There was a really insane dude I ran into somewhere on the internet that would just always talk about how great Persia was and was always bringing up the Persian Empire and talking about how Persian armies defeated Rome or Greece (aka The West) in this or that battle–totally out of context–so I know what you’re talking about.
Oh, and the Iranian guy who uses “West Asia”, also refers to “The West,” meaning Europe and the US, so I guess everyone falls into geographical relativitity eventually.
Asia is a most curious continent. It has a centre, a south, an east, a far east, and a south east.
It doesn’t have a north. It doesn’t have a west. It certainly has no northwest.
The north is called russia. The west and southwest are called the middle east.
The definition of a continent is geological. Geology is a science. By all rights, Europe is part of the Asian landmass. And that should be the end of the story. Culture and history shouldn’t play a part.
It would be like if biologists said, “We know dogs aren’t really human, but we love them so much we’re going to classify them as Homo fidelis anyway.”
It doesn’t make any sense.
ah ok, so you aren’t asking a question, you and your fuckboy @cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com are just there to push an agenda.
Meh. More like I don’t think I’m supposed to be calling it the Middle East without seeming like an imperialist and I don’t want to call it West Asia because I don’t like Europe being a continent, so I’m kinda stuck.
I’m also wondering how people interpret “Middle East”, because I’m sensitive to that shit, especially on a global website. Like I don’t want to be calling placed “third world” if that’s offensive to people in the developing world / global south / ???.
“Middle East” is what I’ve always known the region as, and it’s just a historical-cultural accident that, in my defense, makes just as much sense as separating Europe from Asia. So either we keep both ME and Europe, or we get rid of both, is my logic.
So do I have agenda? Sort of. But also just wondering what people’s thoughts are on the subject.
One of my recent posts here was, “What’s a very specific opinion you have phrased as a question?” in homage to that evergreen and annoying problem of push polling on question forums.
The Middle East is in the middle of the Eastern hemisphere.
No, it is roughly in the middle of the Old World. The middle of the Eastern Hemisphere is further east, in the Bay of Bengal southwest of Myanmar.
The counteies like Iraq, Iran, and the Stans are just west of 90E. They could be considered West Middle East, but they’re closer to the middle than either edge of the hemisphere.
The terms near east, middle east, and far east are labeled as such because of their position relative to the prime meridian, which runs through Europe.
Eurocentric map. Well done proving everyone who is pushing back against middle east right.
Also it’s not “middle” of the eastern hemisphere either. That’d be India and China.
Europe is only in the middle because that’s where the prime meridian is at. Everyone uses the same longitude and latitude and the hemispheres are the same for everyone. It’s definitely in the middle third of the Eastern hemisphere.
And what is the origin of the prime meridian?
They are not ‘just west’ of 90E. 90E is the line passing between India and Indonesia. They are also not in the middle third as you claim below. The middle third would be bounded by the 60E and 120E lines, which you can see in the map (one west of India, and the other passing through Australia).
Everyone of the Stan countries are 60E+.
You mean the Central Asian countries?
Which also happens to be the middle eastern hemisphere countries.
What’s the middle eastern hemisphere?
You seem really confused about the Middle East, and the geography of Asia in general. The Old World is not the same as the Eastern Hemisphere, and the Middle East is not the same as Central Asia.
That’s not where the name comes from. It comes from the distinction of the “far east” (China, Japan, etc) vs. the “middle east” or the “near east.” Which is why many people think it’s Eurocentric, it literally treates Europe as the center.
The prime meridian runs through western Europe. Most of Europe would be in the near East, relative to that point. China is on the far east of the hemisphere. They are fair labels based on their position to the prime meridian.
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Yeah, and we also adopted continental for mainland European, which makes very little sense, though I guess that’s more the inheritance of language.
