Has anyone noticed how in the early Dr. Strange stories Ditko gave the good Doctor an oriental look? I was wondering if perhaps the Doctor was originally envisioned as being a far-eastern character like his mentor the Anicient One?

His appearance certainly suggests he wasn't caucasian.

Strange doesn't look precisely asian, here. It could be that his appearance was inspired by the earlier Dr. Druid.

As he looks more like a visitor from an alternate Ditko-type dimension, I suspect that the concept might originally have been an inter-dimensional alien visitor especially trained to protect the Earth-dimension from menaces invading from his home dimension.

The Stranger-in-a-strange-land concept is fascinating, and might have suggested the character's name.

Pure speculation on my part, of course.

I was pleased when JB included Strange's Ditko-era "glove spots" in the doctor's brief cameo in his(JB's) Galactus Trilogy.

When you think about it, the spots aren't just for the wonky effect... they're good for character identification, especially if Doc(and perhaps one or more other characters) is throwing a zap or whatever from off-panel.

"The correct term would be Asian. "

No, the correct term would be "Mongoloid". Strange's slightly "slanted" eyes are a graphic representation of a particular shape of the skin folds around the eye, that is most often associated with east-asian population groups, radiating out from Mongolia. Which gives name to the third major race-classification (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid).

However, the Mongoloid eye folds are also found in "White people". The small (about 200 thousand) but genetically distinct Northern European (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia) population group called the "Sami" have this as one of their distinguishing characteristics. For an example, look at Renee Zellweger's eyes (She's "Sami" on her mother's side).

Similar types of Mongoloid eye folds, albeit to a moderate degree, can sometimes be found in Eastern Europeans. Like Hungarians (which I believe is where Ditko's family came from).

QUOTE: Asia is kind of a big place with lots of different peoples. Asian doesn't really describe it I think. East Asian? Chinese? Japanese? Kazakh? See what I mean.

So's the "Orient". 

QUOTE: Which gives name to the third major race-classification (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid).

Shouldn't that middle one be "Negroid"

"Mongoloid" (aside from any racist considerations), became a pejorative partly because it was also used to describe the characteristic eye shape of people with Down's syndrome.

So the word "Mongoloid" (and it's shorter form "Mongo") was used to convey the same pejorative meaning as the word "retard". I think it is far better to reclaim the word and shame those who misuse it rather than abandon a word that describes at least 2 billion people.

But in describing facial features, one still uses the words "caucasian", "negroid" (I stand corrected) and "mongoloid".

"Asian" means absolutely nothing when describing a person's appearance. It covers Russians, Arabs, Jews, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian et al. Asians can be "caucasian", "negroid" or "mongoloid". 

I suppose "Asian" has become code for "mongoloid" the same way "African" (or in some ridiculously inappropriate  cases: "African American") has become code for "negroid". But there is more crass over-simplification and subtle racism in those inaccurate code words than there is in the original terms, despite the unfortunate corruption of the word "mongoloid".