Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
Kinda. There’re a few good videos on the topic out there about how every definition has some weirdness. Indeed several education systems around the world teach different numbers of continents (ranging from 4 to 7). For example, some consider all the Americas one, oceania/australia one, antarctica one, and everything else (afro-eur-asia) as one.