Does anyone know the origin of the word "Asia"?

The name Asia is probably from ancient Greek. The Greeks used it to describe all the lands east of Greece itself. The name may also be derived from the Assyrian word 'asu', meaning 'east'." Another possible explanation is that it was originally a local name given to the plains of Ephesus and gradually extended to include Anatolia - Asia Minor - which is the westernmost part of mainland Asia. From there, it extended to cover the rest of the continent. (Answer based on the Encyclopedia Britannica article.)

Thanks, I was hoping for some other options.

The answer that I heard, similar to your last, is that "Asia" was a Greco-Roman name developed out of Anatolian languages from the word "Assuwa". In a document called "the Indictment of Madduwati", there was a list of city-states banded together in a war against someone else, and as a group they were called "Assuwans" (this about 1400 BC). Some Greek writings referenced "Asia" as refering to city states in the same regtion though individual names may or may not have any similarity (all of them were on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts and inland from there).

Most earlier Hittite texts (about 1800-1500 BC) call these same lands "Arzawa", the later texts seem to prefer "Assuwa", but the individual territories included aren't consistant. There was never a supreme authority over these lands, they were always represented as confederations of petty rulers.

I've been studying Anatolian ancient history, and there has been a lot of reworking of words like this, and it seems a little fishy to me, a little too convenient. I can understand Sargon being called Sarrugina, but many of the comparisons made stretch the imagination!

If you look at old english or french compared to modern english, you'll see evolution of words that would look at least as fishy, but can be fully traced out by looking at intermediate texts. Words really do change a lot sometimes.

Yes, they do, but the thing is that the change we're aware of makes it easy for us to jump to conclusions about changes we're only guessing at without a substantial amount of literature to back it up.