Southwest Asia

2014-07-16:

The common proper nouns "Middle East" or "Mideast"
seem culturally and geographically parochial to me.
While they are east of Europe (which explains their origin),
they are west of most of Asia.
Why would a Chinese or Japanese person want to call them such a Euro-centric term.

As a correction, I propose calling the region described above by the term
Southwest Asia.
That seems geographically correct:
if you consider the map of Asia provided by Wikipedia,

what is now called the Middle East

actually is precisely the southwest quadrant of that great continent, together with Egypt.
Why not use that fact to name it?
An evident answer to that question is that it would omit Egypt.
Perhaps that is good reason to retrain the current terminology.

I realize that currently "Southwest Asia" is used for a different, and more limited region.
But that seems largely because the term "Mideast" currently is used
for what might be properly Southwest Asia.