Anatolia the Mediterranean, Greeks in Late Antiquity came to use the name Μικρὰ Ἀσία ("Mikrá Asía") or Asia Minor, meaning "Lesser Asia" to refer to present-day Anatolia. The English-language name "Anatolia" itself derives from the Greek ("") meaning “the East” or more literally “sunrise” (comparable to the Latin-derived terms "levant" and "orient"). The precise reference of this term has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the Byzantine Empire, the Anatolic Theme (Ἀνατολικόν θέμα) was a "theme" covering the western and central parts of Turkey's present-day Central
Ancient Greek phonology and this cluster underwent metathesis early in the Ancient Greek period. Metathesis is likely in this case; clusters of a voiced stop and , like , do not occur in Ancient Greek, since they change to by assimilation (see below), while clusters with the opposite order, like , pronounced , do occur. Ancient grammarians, such as Aristotle in his "Poetics" and Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar, categorized letters () according to what speech sounds ( 'elements') they represented. They called the letters for vowels ('pronounceable', singular ); the letters for the nasals, liquids, and , and the letters