... Among the numerous conjectures which have been made as to the etymology of the term Africa (Ἀφρική) may be quoted that which derives it from the Semitic radical פדר ("separate"), Africa being considered, in this connexion, as a Phoenician settlement "separated" from the mother country, Asiatic Phoenicia.  It has also been held that the word Africa comes from friqi, farikia (the country of fruit).  The best hypothesis in the writer's opinion is that maintained by Charles Tissot, who sees in the word "Africa" the name of the great Berber tribe, the Aourigha (whose name would have been pronounced Afarika), the modern Aouraghen, now driven back into the Sahara, but in ancient times the principal indigenous element of the African empire of Carthage (Tissot, Géogr. comp. i.. 389).  Thus Africa was originally, in the eyes of the Romans and Carthaginians alike, the country inhabited by the great tribe of Berbers or Numidians called Afarik.  Cyrenaica, on the east, attached to Egypt, was then excluded from it, and, similarly, Mauretania, on the west. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chisholm, v.1, 1910)