Aegea is a back-formation from "
Aegean", the sea that was named for an
eponymous Aegeus in early levels of
Greek mythology. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) mentioned an
Aegea, queen of the Amazons, as an alternative eponym of the Aegean Sea, and Aegea was the name of the wife of the Roman
proconsul of
Achaia whom the
apostle Andrew converted and baptised, according to
Jacob de Voragine's
Golden Legend,
De Sancto Andrea Apostolo. "Aegea" is found in modern baby-name books and carried by some contemporary women.
Modern Italian has the adjective Egea ("Aegean"), but Classical Latin had none. Modern botanical Latin sometimes uses the specific epithet aegea to mean "of the Aegean".
Modern usages include "Aegea" as a Turkish socio-geographic term for the Aegean basin and the nations around it, as in "Izmir, pearl of Aegea." Geologists also use "Aegea" to describe the fragmentary rotating crustal block that supports mainland Greece and the Aegean basin, as a parallel to "Anatolia." This block is rotating counter-clockwise and is being strongly subducted into a line of trenches south of Crete.
Near another city of Aegea, in Euboea, Poseidon had his watery palace.
