section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  Tradition holds that the name Ethiopia (ኢትዮጵያ) comes from the name of the first King of Ethiopia, Ethiop, or Ethiopis.
  
  Ayele Berkerie explains:
  
  According to an Ethiopian tradition, the term Ethiopia is derived from the word Ethiopis, a name of the Ethiopian king, the seventh in the ancestral lines. Metshafe Aksum or the Ethiopian Book of Aksum identifies Itiopis as the twelfth king of Ethiopia and the father of Aksumawi. The Ethiopians pronounce Ethiopia እትዮጵያ with a Sades or the sixth sound እ as in incorporate and the graph ጰ has no equivalent in English or Latin graphs. Ethiopis is believed to be the twelfth direct descendant of Adam. His father is identified as Kush, while his grandfather is known as Kam.
  
  In the 15th-century Ge'ez Book of Axum, the name is ascribed to a legendary individual called Ityopp'is. He was an extra-biblical son of Cush, son of Ham, said to have founded the city of Axum.
  
  The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from Αἰθίοψ, "an Ethiopian") is a compound word, later explained as derived from the Greek words αἴθω and ὤψ (eithō "I burn" + ōps "face"). According to the Liddell-Scott Jones Greek-English Lexicon, the designation properly translates as burnt-face in noun form and red-brown in adjectival form. The historian Herodotus used the appellation to denote those parts of Africa south of the Sahara that were then known within the Ecumene (habitable world). The earliest mention of the term is found in the works of Homer, where it is used to refer to two people groups, one in Africa and one in the east from eastern Turkey to India. This Greek name was borrowed into Amharic as ኢትዮጵያ, ʾĪtyōṗṗyā.
  
  In Greco - Roman epigraphs, Aethiopia was a specific toponym for ancient Nubia. At least as early as c. 850, the name Aethiopia also occurs in many translations of the Old Testament in allusion to Nubia. The ancient Hebrew texts identify Nubia instead as Kush. However, in the New Testament, the Greek term Aithiops does occur, referring to a servant of the Kandake, the queen of Kush.
  
  Following the Hellenic and biblical traditions, the Monumentum Adulitanum, a 3rd-century inscription belonging to the Aksumite Empire, indicates that Aksum's ruler governed an area that was flanked to the west by the territory of Ethiopia and Sasu. The Aksumite King Ezana eventually conquered Nubia the following century, and the Aksumites thereafter appropriated the designation "Ethiopians" for their own kingdom. In the Ge'ez version of the Ezana inscription, Aἰθίοπες is equated with the unvocalized Ḥbšt and Ḥbśt (Ḥabashat), and denotes for the first time the highland inhabitants of Aksum. This new demonym was subsequently rendered as ḥbs ('Aḥbāsh) in Sabaic and as Ḥabasha in Arabic. Derivatives of this are used in some languages that use loanwords from Arabic, for example in Malay Habsyah.
  
  In English, and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was historically known as Abyssinia. This toponym was derived from the Latinized form of the ancient Habash.