Horn of Africa covered the Simien and Bale Mountains but melted at the beginning of the Holocene. The mountains descend in a huge escarpment to the Red Sea and more steadily to the Indian Ocean. Socotra is a small island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia. Its size is 3,600 km (1,390 sq mi) and it is a territory of Yemen. The lowlands of the Horn are generally arid in spite of their proximity to the equator. This is because the winds of the tropical monsoons that give seasonal rains to the Sahel and the Sudan blow from the west.
Horn of Africa as የአፍሪካ ቀንድ yäafrika qänd in Amharic, القرن الأفريقي‎ al-qarn al-'afrīqī in Arabic, Gaaffaa Afriikaa in Oromo and ቀርኒ ኣፍሪቃ in Tigrinya. The Horn of Africa is sometimes shortened to "HOA". The Horn of Africa is quite commonly designated simply the "Horn", while inhabitants are sometimes colloquially referred to as "Horn Africans". Sometimes the term "Greater Horn of Africa" is used, either to be inclusive of neighbouring northeast African countries, or to distinguish the broader geopolitical definition of the Horn of Africa from narrower peninsular definitions. Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to the Somali peninsula as Regio Aromatica or Regio