Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. The term continent here refers to a cultural and political distinction rather than a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europe's precise borders. Physically and geologically, Europe is a subcontinent or large peninsula, the westernmost part of Eurasia.
Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, and – according to the traditional geographic definition – to the south-east by the waterways adjoining the Mediterranean to and including the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains (in Caucasia). Europe's eastern frontier is vague, but has traditionally been given as the divide of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea to the south-east. The Urals are considered by most to be a geographical and tectonic landmark separating Asia from Europe.
Europe is the world's second-smallest of the seven traditional continents in terms of area, covering about 10 400 000 square kilometres (4,010,000 sq mi) or 2.0% of the Earth's surface. The only continent smaller than Europe is Australia. In terms of population, it is the third-largest continent (Asia and Africa are larger) with a population of some 710,000,000, or about 11% of the world's population.
The European Union, comprising 25 member states, is the largest political and economic entity covering the European continent, with the Russian Federation being the second (excluding the portions of Russia historically considered to be in Asia).
In Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess who was abducted and raped by Zeus in bull form and taken to the island of Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. For Homer, Europe (Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē; see also List of traditional Greek place names) was a mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation. Later Europa stood for mainland Greece, and by 500 BC its meaning had been extended to lands to the north.
The Greek term Europe is derived from Greek words meaning 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 really based on a Semitic word such as the Akkadian erebu meaning "sunset"[1] (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, meaning "sunrise",[2] and is the land to the east from a Middle Eastern perspective.
The majority of major world languages use words derived from "Europa" to refer to the continent – e.g. Chinese uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲), which is abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲).