NAMING NEW ZEALAND.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2433, 26 July 1924, Page 11

NAMING NEW ZEALAND.

THE DUTCH DISCOVERERS. CONSUL-GENERAL’S STATEMENT. Particulars as to ’the origin of the name New Zealand were recently sought from"the Consul-General ml Uie Netherlands for Australia and New /.ealaud, wno resides iu Sydney, W Mr F. C. Attv/ood, of Woodhill. Mi Attwood stales that one of his objects was to clear up the misapprehension that the name was adopted from Zealand in Denmark. In his reply the Consul-General dates that Abe) Tasman named this Dominion “Staten-landt,” after the Notherland Stat.es-Geuerai, being un der the impression that the land discovered might be part of the Statenlandt, situated near tho South Point of South America. The name Statenlandt was altered to about the year 1650 to Nova Zealandia, or to the Low Dutch name, Nieuvv , Zeeland. Presumably the name Sta.tenlandt was finally rejected because-in the year 1693, Hedrik Brouwer, GovernorGeneral of the West India Company, discovered, when making a poyage to Chili, that the Statenlandt near the South Point of South America was not a continent but an island, so that Tasman’s suppostion proved to be fallacious. The name, Nova-Zelandia was then apparently given by Netherlands chartographers as a pendant to Nova Holiandia for Australia Nova Zelandia, concludes the letter, is named after the district of Zeeland, which, like Holland, was one of tho provinces of the republic of the United Netherlands Provinces and the correct Dutch orthography : of the name Is Niemv Zeeland.