warning. Something in here wil probably offend someone. But meh.

Anywho. These are things that I know probably can't be answered, and I really don't care about hearing an answer either. They are just things that crossed my mind.

Like, for example -

Why is there a MIDDLE East.
There's no MIDDLE North, MIDDLE south. Is there?
And even Mid West doesn't count, because it's a region, not a collection of countries. So ....

Why?
Why single them out?

The Middle East is so named relative to Western Europe in ancient times, and denotes its location relative to the Near East, which would have been the closer stretches of the Ottoman Empire, and the Far East, places like China.

there should be a middle earth :p

If a collection of countries isn't a region than what is Central America/ Western Europe/ Scandinavia???

Also there is glorious "Mitteleuropa" in Englisch "Middle Europe" where I am from but it is not said so much in English.

But those are direct North/whatever.
I'm not talking 'Oh, this is the eastern part of X area'. I mean come on. Asia is the East, because it's the farthest east you can go before you're on the western side.
So why not haven a Middle-West part of the world?
Or Middle-North?

I mean general for the planet. Not for the specific area.

But the Middle East is in Asia and middle easterners are asians, I am thinking? Like academic materials will prefer to say Western Asia to avoid problems sich qs racism, etc.

And Midwest is generally Ohio, Nebraska, Illinoiss, kind of isolated places in US mainly growing soybeans and corn. But no one ever says "Midwest US" just "Midwest" and are understood. Maybe its also a global region just currently controlled by s single countru?

Like if I go to Lomdon and say "yes, the Midwest is famous for corm" people are not comfused thinking I mean midwestern part of England, they imfer.

If we take into account that we live in a giant ball floating on an empty space, the whole concept of cardinal directions sound stupid.

I think maybe it's a cultural thing. The middle eastern countries don't quite fit into their western neighbours (europe) way of life, therefore not being included into the "Western civilization" group. Their whole culture, political system and philosophies are more likely what you see over the most eastern countries, but they're a lot different from those either, so it makes sense for that region to be called "Middle East", apparently it got that denomination after the concept of western/eastern world had already been estabilished.

Most of geography as we know it comes from the very specific perspective of western Europe or Rome (and then the West Roman Empire or the Catholic Church). As Chaytel said, the Near East was the name for Turkey, and, in fact, for what is now Syria, Lebanon, and Israel-Palestine (who are all generally lumped in with the middle east today). The Middle east was more for Iraq and Iran, which formed the frontier of the Roman world at its height, and then the far east was beyond.

Interestingly, Asia as a whole is named for one province of Anatolia/Turkey on the Aegean, much as all of Africa is named for a province that is today Tunisia, so both continents are named for the nearest Roman province in them.