Short answers, pulled from the story.
The German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the phrase Silk Road in 1877. This occurred nearly two millennia after the first caravans began moving between China and the Mediterranean. No traveler, merchant, or emperor before his invention ever called the network by that name.
The formal initiation of the Silk Road occurred around 130 BCE. It was driven not by a desire for trade but by a desperate military strategy employed by the Han dynasty. The Han dynasty sent the imperial envoy Zhang Qian to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi people against the Xiongnu.
The Roman Senate issued several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk citing economic and moral grounds. The import of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold and silk clothes were considered decadent and immoral. Despite the ban, the demand was insatiable and Roman-style glassware was traded as far as the Korean peninsula.
The Sogdians dominated the east-west trade after the 4th century up to the 8th century. They served as the main caravan merchants of Central Asia and were the driving force of the Great Silk Road. The Sogdian language served as a lingua franca for Asian trade as far back as the 4th century.
The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1207 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-established the Silk Road. One theory holds that the Black Death which devastated Europe starting in the late 1340s may have reached Europe from Central Asia or China along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire. Some studies indicate that Genoese traders coming from the entrepôt of Trebizond in northern Turkey carried the disease to Western Europe.
UNESCO designated the Chang'an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site in 2014. The Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor was designated in 2023. The China National Silk Museum announced a Silk Road Week to take place 19-the 25th of June 2020 to commemorate the designation.