The word ‘Australia’ is the noun form of the Latin word australis which means ‘southern’, and the unknown southern land mass, which was once thought to include Antarctica, had long been named on charts as Terra Australis Incognita. Following Dutch explorations, which made the outline of the continent a great deal less ‘incognita’, the accepted name became ‘New Holland’ or ‘Terra Australis’.
However, Flinders gave his chart the general label ‘Australia’ or ‘Terra Australis’, and marked the eastern half ‘British Government of New South Wales’ and the western half ‘New Holland’. Then he wrapped the chart up and sent it to Sir Joseph Banks in England, together with a letter which explained his preference for the name:
The propriety of the name Australia or Terra Australis, which I have applied to the whole body of what has generally been called New Holland must be submitted to the approbation of the Admiralty and the learned in geography … as it is required that the whole body should have one general name, since it is now known … that it certainly all one land, so I justly think one more acceptable to all parties and on all accounts cannot be found than that now applied.
Banks appears to have lost interest in the hapless Flinders during his incarceration, and the chart remained unopened until its creator’s return in 1810.
It was not until 1817 that Governor Macquarie endorsed and published a portion of Flinders’ chart under that name. Flinders so strongly espoused being ‘more agreeable to the ear’, came into use, and it was a further seven years after that before the Admiralty accepted ‘Australia’ as the official name for the continent.
However, it turns out that Flinders was not the first to use the name ‘Australia’. It had been used in a 1622 account of the voyage of Dutch navigators, Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, from Cape Horn to Indonesia in 1615 (about which there is more in article on the Dutch explorers in this issue). The name also appeared on a 1799 chart of the English navigator, Captain James Wilson, who sailed the Duff to the South Pacific islands for the London Missionary Society in 1796–1798.
An intriguing twist has been given to the origins of the name with the acquisition by the National Library of Australia of a German book on astronomy, titled Astronomia-Teutsch and published by Cyriacus Jacob zum Barth at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1545.
The vellum-bound book includes amongst its woodcut illustrations a windhead world map, oriented to the south, on which the rather shapeless southern landmass is named ‘Australia’.
Was it a coincidence that the authors of these two charts, separated in time by more than 250 years, chose the name ‘Australia’, or had Flinders perhaps come across the early work in his studies?
