Asia Aswia appears to have been a remnant of a region known to the Hittites as Assuwa, centered on Lydia, or "Roman Asia". This name, "Assuwa", has been suggested as the origin for the name of the continent "Asia". The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE. Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word "(w)aṣû(m)", which means 'to go outside' or 'to ascend', referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East and also likely connected with the Phoenician
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