I was just visiting a sister who has a reprint of an 1828 American dictionary (https://www.amazon.com/American-Dictionary-English-Language-Facsimile/dp/091249803X, partially-available at https://archive.org/details/noah-websters-1828-dictionary-ellen-g-white-estate). I love looking through old dictionaries, so of course I thumbed through hers...repeatedly.
To my surprise, this was the entry for "Europe":
The current dictionaries don't show a Hebrew/Aramaic etymology for Europe. Here's the entry from my enormous 1971 dictionary:
When I "Google" the etymology of Europe, I get a lot of supposition, references to Greek myths, etc. But the Aramaic word for face is "appa," and the Aramaic word for white is "howwar"--"howwar-appa" spoken quickly sounds pretty much like the same pronunciation for when most Europeans say the name of their landmass, i.e., Europa (English drops the vowel at the end of Europa). (See https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/15-640-215 ("white" = " and "χewwār") and https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/4-204-215 ("face" = "appa").)
Aramaic and Hebrew have been in use by Jewish scholars continuously throughout the last two millennia and more (see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1051040/jewish/Aramaic-the-Yiddish-of-the-Middle-East.htm). An Aramaic etymology for "Europa" makes sense, for the Aramaic languages is nearly three thousand years old and is thought to have originated in northern Mesopotamia.
Why did the writers of dictionaries and etymologies discard a logical, supported-by-the-evidence etymology for Europe from Aramaic words? And without any mention of why the elimination was made?
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