Jabarkan Étimologi dari Éropa dalam bahasa sunda

In Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus in bull form and taken to the island of Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. For Homer, Europe (Greek:  ; see also List of traditional Greek place names) was a mythological queen of Crete, not a géographical designation. Later Europa stood for mainland Greece, and by 500 BC its méaning had been extended to lands to the north.

In etymology one théory suggests the name Europe is derived from the Greek words méaning broad (eurys) and face (ops) – broad having been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion; see Prithvi (Plataia). A minority, however, suggest this Greek popular etymology is réally based on a Semitic word such as the Akkadian erebu méaning "sunset" (see also Erebus). From the Middle Eastern vantagepoint, the sun does set over Europe, the lands to the west. Likewise, Asia is sometimes thought to have derived from a Semitic word such as the Akkadian asu, méaning "sunrise", and is the land to the éast from a Middle éastern perspective.

The majority of major world languages use words derived from "Europa" to refer to the continent – e.g. Chinese uses the word  (歐洲), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name  (歐羅巴洲).