The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia. It was also used to indicate the eastern direction in historical astronomy as the adjective Oriental.
The term "Orient" derives from the Latin word oriens meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior "rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Vostok" Russian: Восток (< Russian voskhod Russian: восход "sunrise"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic: شرق (< Arabic yashruq Arabic: يشرق "rise", shurooq Arabic: شروق "rising"), "shygys" Kazakh: шығыс (< Kazakh shygu Kazakh: шығу "come out"), Chinese: 東 (pinyin: dōng, a pictograph of the sun rising behind a tree) and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan. Also, many ancient temples, including pagan temples and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, were built with their main entrances facing the East. To situate them in such a manner was to "orient" them in the proper direction. When something was facing the correct direction, it was said to be in the proper "orientation".
The opposite term "Occident" is derived from the Latin word occidens meaning "west" (lit. "setting" < "occido" "fall/set"). This term was once used to mean the West (where the sun sets) but has fallen into disuse in English.
