Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as “New Holland”.

For many centuries Europeans believed there must be a vast land in the southern hemisphere, variously called “Terra Australis Incognita” or “Unknown South Land”. When Dutch explorer Abel Tasman discovered this new continent in the 1644, they named it “New Holland”, after the region they were from in the Netherlands. English explorer, Matthew Flinders, renamed it Australia in his map in 1804.

Source, Image credit: Samuel Dunn and Thomas Kitchin