This term derives from the Latin word “Oriënt”, meaning east. Historically, the term came to be used in Europe to describe people or things from Asia. “Oriental” gained widespread critique after the 1978 publication of Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism, which critiqued Euro-American patronizing representations of the (Middle) East. While the term is contested for being geographically Eurocentric, and especially for its romanticizing and stereotypical image of Asian people as mysterious, “exotic” and foreign, it is still widely used.