Etymology
The name "Australia" is derived from the Latin Australis, meaning "Southern". Legends of an "unknown land of the south" (terra australis incognita) date back to Roman times and were commonplace in medieval geography, but were not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. In 1521 Spaniards were among the first Europeans to sail the Pacific. The first use of the word "Australia" in English was in 1625—the words "A note of Australia del Espiritu Santo, written by Master Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus. It is said that the name Australia originally came from the Spanish man Pedro Fernández de Quirós whose travels around the southern seas brought him close to the lands he named “Australia del Espiritu Santo” in honour of the House of Austria which, at the time, governed the Spanish Empire. The Dutch adjectival form Australische was used by Dutch officials in Batavia to refer to the newly discovered land to the south in 1638. "Australia" was used in a 1693 translation of Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Découverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe, a 1676 French novel by Gabriel de Foigny under the pen name Jacques Sadeur. Alexander Dalrymple then used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean (1771), to refer to the entire South Pacific region. In 1793, George Shaw and Sir James Smith published Zoology and Botany of New Holland, in which they wrote of "the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland."The name "Australia" was popularised by the 1814 work A Voyage to Terra Australis by the navigator Matthew Flinders, the first recorded person to circumnavigate Australia. Though its title reflected the British Admiralty's usage, Flinders used the word "Australia" in his book and as it was widely read it gave the term general currency. Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales subsequently used the word in his dispatches to England, and on 12 December 1817 recommended to the Colonial Office that it be officially adopted. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as "Australia".
The word "Australia" in Australian English is pronounced /əˈstɹæɪljə, -liːə, -jə/.
页:
[1]