ASIA A CONTINENT NAMED AFTER A GREEK DEITY

 

The word Asia originated from the Ancient Greek word Ἀσία, first attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BCE) in reference to Anatolia or to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt.

It originally was just a name for the east bank of the Aegean Sea, an area known to the Hittites as Assuwa. In early Classical times, the Greeks started using the term "Asia" to refer to the whole region known today as Anatolia (the peninsula which forms the Asian portion of present-day turkey). The Roman Empire referred to the entire Lydian region of what is now northwestern turkey as the province of Asia. Eventually, however, the name had been stretched progressively further east, until it came to encompass the much larger land area with which we associate it today, while the Anatolian Peninsula started being called "Asia Minor" or "The Lesser Asia" instead.

The deeper root of the etymology can only be guessed at. The following two possibilities have been suggested:

It could have originated from the Aegean root "Asis" which means "muddy and silty" as a description of the eastern shores of the Aegean Sea.

It could derive from the borrowed Semitic root "Asu", which means varyingly "rising" or "light", of course a directional referring to the sunrise, Asia thus meaning 'Eastern Land'.

However, since the Greek name Asia is in all likelihood related to Hittite Assuwa, the etymology of one has to account for the other as well.

In Greek Tradition, Asia is a name that belongs to  these deities:

1. Asia, one of the 3,000 Oceanides, daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. Asia is an Oceanid-nymph of Lydia in Anatolia (West Asia) and the wife of the Titan Prometheus. What is interesting is that,as we mentioned above, the term 'Asia' was first applied by the ancient Greeks to the region of Anatolia (modern Turkey) and it  was used to describe the ancient empire of the Lydians and its royal family (the Asiad clan)--a region often associated with the Titan Prometheus .Asia was frequently confounded with Klymene-Asia, wife of Iapetos and mother of Prometheus, and was probably the same as Pronoia, an Okeanis also named as the wife of Prometheus.

2. Asia, one of the 50 Nereids, the sea-Nymph daughters of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanid Doris. She was counted in the train of Cyrene and may be the same to the above Asia.

3. Asia, a surname of Athena in Colchis. Her worship was believed to have been brought from thence by Castor and Polydeuces to Laconia, where a temple was built to Her at Las.

We do have references in literature about the possible divine origin of the name.

Hesiod, Theogony 346 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or 7th BCE):

"Tethys bore to Okeanos (Oceanus) the swirling Potamoi (Rivers) . . . She [Tethys] brought forth also a race apart of daughters [the Okeanides], who with Lord Apollo and the Rivers have the young in their keeping all over the earth, since this right from Zeus is given to them. robed in saffron, Khryseis (Chryseis), and Asia, and alluring Kalypso (Calypso).

Now these are the eldest of the daughters who were born to Tethys and Okeanos, but there are many others beside these, for there are three thousand light-stepping daughters of Okeanos scattered far and wide, bright children among the goddesses, and all alike look after the earth and the depths of the standing water."

Herodotus, Histories 4. 45. 1 (trans. Godley) (Greek historian, 5th c. BCE):

"Asia [was named] after the wife of Prometheus; yet the Lydians claim a share in the latter name, saying that Asia was not named after Prometheus' wife Asia, but after Asias, the son of Kotys (Cotys), who was the son of Manes, and that from him the Asiad clan at Sardis also takes its name."

Edited from Wikipedia and Theoi.com