Why Is Africa Called Africa?

There are a bunch of theories to the origin of Africa's name. After the Romans defeated Carthage (current day Tunisia), they called their new province Africa after the native tribe there, Afri. There is also an alternate theory that it came from a Phoenician word afar, meaning dust together with the Latin suffix -ica, sometimes used to refer to land, thus the land of dust - given its hot, desert-like climate.

There is also this other theory that it originated from the Greek word phrike ("cold") and the negating prefix a-, meaning the land free of cold. It is said to have been attributed by Leo Africanus. But linguists say the transformation of ph to f in Greek language happened around 1st century, so this notion is rather disputable.

IMHO it makes more sense that it was from the Romans and when Europeans started to conquer and generously give it a name, it is likely that they had gone with the name Africa to denote the entire land mass.

Wikipedia has other etymological hypotheses postulated.




The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
Isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. suggests the Latin aprica "sunny".
Massey, in 1881, states that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."[12]
Yet another hypothesis was proposed by Michèle Fruyt,[13] linking the Latin word with africus "south wind", which would be of Umbrian origin and mean originally "rainy wind".