Far Eastern

Far East
Location of the Far East, geographically defined
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	遠東
Simplified Chinese	远东
Literal meaning	Far East
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yuǎn Dōng Tongyong Pinyin Yuǎn Dōng Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Yuen5 Dong1 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Óan-tong
Burmese name
Burmese	အရှေ့ဖျား ဒေသ
IPA	[ʔəʃḛbjá dèθa̰]
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet	Viễn Đông
Chữ Hán
Thai name
Thai	ตะวันออกไกล Tawan-oak klai
Korean name
Hangul	극동
Hanja	極東
Transcriptions Revised Romanization Geuk Dong McCune–Reischauer Kŭk Tong
Mongolian name
Mongolian	Als Dornod
Japanese name
Kanji	極東
Transcriptions Romanization Kyoku Tō
Malay name
Malay	تيمور جاوء Timur Jauh
Indonesian name
Indonesian	Timur Jauh
Filipino name
Tagalog	Silanganan (poetic) Malayong Silangan (literal)
Portuguese name
Portuguese	Extremo Oriente
Russian name
Russian	Дальний Восток IPA: [ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok]
Romanization	Dál'niy Vostók

The Far East is an alternate geographical term in English (with equivalents in many other languages – see the infobox on the right for examples), that usually refers to East Asia (including Northeast Asia), the Russian Far East (part of North Asia), and Southeast Asia.South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.

Since the 1960s, East Asia has become the most common term for the region in international mass media outlets. Far East is often deprecated as archaic and Eurocentric, along with the terms "Near East" and "Middle East".

The term Far East came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 12th century, denoting the Far East as the "farthest" of the three "easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. For the same reason, Chinese people in the 19th and early 20th centuries called Western countries "Tàixī (泰西)"—i.e. anything further west than the Arab world.

Prior to the colonial era, "Far East" referred to anything further east than the Middle East. In the 16th century, King John III of Portugal called India a "rich and interesting country in the Far East (Extremo Oriente)." The term was popularized during the period of the British Empire as a blanket term for lands to the east of British India.