AUSTRALIA STOLE ANTARCTICA'S NAME

New Holland is the historical European name for mainland Australia. The name was applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman. The name came to be applied to the whole “Southern land” or Terra Australis, though the coastline of the continent had still not been fully explored. After the British settlement in Sydney in 1788 the territory to the east of the continent claimed by Britain was named New South Wales, leaving the western part as New Holland. After British colonization, the name New Holland was retained for several decades and the south polar continent continued to be called Terra Australis, sometimes shortened to Australia. Then in the nineteenth century, the colonial authorities in Sydney removed the Dutch name from New Holland. Instead of inventing a new name to replace it, they took the name Australia from the south polar continent, leaving it nameless for some eighty years. During that period, geographers had to make do with clumsy phrases such as "the Antarctic Continent". They searched for a more poetic replacement, suggesting various names such as Ultima and Antipodea. Eventually Antarctica was adopted in the 1890s.