Where does “Africa” come from?
Africa comes from Latin Africa, originally an adjective suffix -icus applied to a geographical region, with the suffix later grammaticalized as part of the place name itself.
Africa (English): contrasted with the Maghreb
Definitions
- contrasted with the Maghreb
Ancestry of “Africa”, step by step
Africa traces back through two separate lines of ancestry.
via Old French Affrike
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Old French | Affrike | — |
| 2 | Latin | āfricus | African |
| 3 | Latin | Āfri | — |
| 4 | Albanian | afër | at, beside, by, near, nearby, near to, next to |
| 5 | Proto-Albanian | apsera | at, beside, by, near, nearby, near to, next to |
| 6 | Proto-Albanian | aps | — |
| 7 | Latin | Apis | A seaport town of Egypt situated at the borders with Marmarica |
| 8 | Ancient Greek | Ἄπις | — |
| 9 | Coptic | ϩⲁⲡⲉ | the Apis bull, a bull worshipped as a herald of the gods (first Ptah, then Osiris, then Atum) |
| 10 | Egyptian | ḥp | the god Apis |
via Latin Āfrica
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Latin | Āfrica | the territory of Carthage, the African coast west of Cyrenaica |