[beebeepka]

What a sad, sad read. Kind of makes my blood boil, too. We've barely started but half the comments are already grey.

As a side note: anyone else wonder why the English speaking world refers to the region as "the middle East"? To me it is the near East. Not just because of proximity but I've never heard or read about a near East from anglo sources. What is the rationale?

[kmlx]

here you go:

> The origin of the term "Middle East" is considered to be in the British India Office during the 1850s. It was popularized by Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval strategist who was referring to the region between Arabia and India in 1902. Mahan’s definition of the Middle East was the area around the Persian Gulf. Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol further enlarged this definition to cater for the Asian regions whose territories extended to India.

> Prior to the Second World War, another term, the "Near East", denoted the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in addition to regions centered around Turkey. Middle East was used by the British while naming its command in Egypt in the late 1930s. It was after this usage that the term became widely used in the West. In 1946, the Middle East Institute began operating in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States.

[pjc50]

By contrast with the "far east", which is everywhere east of India. I think if someone said "near east" I'd interpret it as roughly the Balkans: Vienna to the Bosporous. No longer as politically important a region.

[meitham]

I have recently seen a campaign in Middle Eastern media to rename the region to West Asia, probably for similar reasons to what you mentioned.

[mr_toad]

The ‘near’ east used to refer to the eastern reaches of the (former) Roman Empire: Syria, Palestine and Egypt. It is a little bit obsolete.