Asian or Oriental?

[Fan_in_Kettering]

(03-18-2017, 04:44 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Why is it considered bad form to refer to people from SE Asia as Oriental? I understand that Asian is now the preferred term of reference, but I'm not sure it means what everyone intends it to mean. When a person says "Asian", the common thought is a person of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. decent. But alas, there are more Countries in Asia, and those people look nothing like the stereotypical "Asian" person. I mean you have people from Russia, India, and many more, and they look nothing like the people commonly associated as being Asian.

So, why can't we still use "Oriental" to differentiate?

I think the term fell out of favor for Asians when the term "Occidental" stopped being used for westerners. Here comes my Latin training, just when I thought I wouldn't use it outside of Church: The "orientalis" is Latin for "rise" which is what the sun does in the east and "occidentalis" is the Latin prefix for "set" which is what the sun does in the west. North and south in Latin are "borealis" and "australis" which are why the northern and southern lights are named that way.