“Oriental” has meant different things at different times and in different places. The Orient Express went to Istanbul. More recently, and perhaps in the United States more than in Europe, the term “Oriental” largely refers to East Asians. Indeed, Ritchey Produce Co., Inc. v. State (Ohio 1999), questioned whether a Lebanese-American was entitled to benefit from an affirmative action program that covered “Orientals.” The court said “no,” approving a rule that defined the term to refer to “all persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, including China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.”
But as far as I know, only the official name of a country actually defines it as Eastern. What is that?