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How did one
come to the point of naming the west of the huge Eurasian continent after
this nymph ? What was the meaning of such a story, of this short episode
among thousand ones of the corpus of Greek myths, for Greeks of legendary
times and for those of heroic times ? Herodote was already questioning
about it at the end of the 5th century B.C. : " I cannot guess
why the earth, which is one, has three names, all women's namesŸ And I can
neither find the names of those who divided the world in such a way nor
the places where they found these denominationsŸ Most curiously Tyrian Europa
was of Asian birth and never came to this land that today Greeks name Europe,
but only went from Phoenicia to Crete and from Crete to Lycia. " He
concludes philosophically : " We consider that names are established
by custom ". Unclear for Herodote, what can mean this interrogation
today for peoples who inhabit the western marches of Eurasia, those peoples
that geographs and politicians today call Europeans ?
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