If New Zealand is new, where is Zealand?!

by pawlieg

Another interesting fact to follow up on the ‘real Australian discoverers’, Able Tasman actually discovered New Zealand. He named it New Zeeland after a province consisting of a row of islands above Holland called co-incidentally…….’Zeeland’, meaning ‘Sea Land’. Once captain Cook re-discovered the region, he renamed New Holland to Australia, and anglicised New Zeeland to Zealand, the english word for province of Zeeland. Next time you meet a Kiwi, ask them the heritage of their country name. Most of them are unaware.

This entry was posted on October 7, 2010 at 08:42 and is filed under Nugget of Knowledge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.