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 art of Greek objects still further afield, exposed much of Eurasia to it, including the regions in the north of the Indian subcontinent where Buddhism was expanding, and creating Greco-Buddhist art. As Buddhism spread across Central Asia to China and the rest of East Asia, in a form that made great use of religious art, versions of this vocabulary were taken with it and used to surround images of buddhas and other religious images, often with a size and emphasis that would have seemed excessive to the ancient Greeks. The vocabulary was absorbed into the ornament of India, China, Persia and