The name ‘Africa’ came into Western use through the Romans, who used the name to refer to the “land of the Afri†(plural or “Afer†singular). The Afri/Afarik/Afrid supposedly inhabited the region to the south of Carthage, which is the northern part of the continent corresponding to present day Tunisia. When Romans added Carthage to their empire, the ethnonym was transformed into a geonym to name the entire province, Ifriquia. The historian Leo Africanus (1495-1554) attributed the Greek word phrike (φÏικε) to refer to the continent, meaning “without cold and horror”. The addition of the prefix ‘a’ to ‘phrike’ to form ‘Aphrike’ / ‘Aprike meant a “land free from cold and horrorâ€.
Another alternative theory is that Africa comes from two Phoenician terms, one of which means ear of horn, a fertility symbol in the region, and the other Pharikia, meaning ‘land of fruit.’
[There are other theories on the origins of the name ‘Africa’ – share, if you find them plausible]
About 2000 years ago, ‘Aethiopia’ may have been used to refer to all the land South of the Sahara but the European preferred Africa to describe the whole continent. Before the Europeans, descriptions of Africa were ‘sunny’, ‘free from cold and horror’, ‘land of sunshine and warmth.’ When the Europeans came, they began describing Africa as the ‘dark continent.’
Today, Africa is still generalized by a majority of non-Africans as a whole with common culture, language, colour, and religion. This assumption is probably borne out of the impression by Africans who freely describe themselves as simply ‘African’. It appears that the African identity is much stronger than that of individual country or tribe or region in the continent. Generalization is also linked to the preference of Africans to call each other “brothers and sisters†even if they have no blood relationship, an identity that originated from cultural values and further influenced in the early part of the 20th century by colonial exploitation for a common history.
The obvious fact that is acceptable to all now, is that, the word Africa is not part of African heritage. It is not derived within the continent, ethnicity, or culture as it was given by non-Africans.