Here is some info about the names of these two great places I very much enjoyed visiting and living in plus some of my thoughts about them.
I am fortunate to have made many good friends in New Zealand (NZ) and Australia while living in Austrialia and the UK and during my travels. NZ is also the home of my wife’s immediate family.
To learn more about this see my about page.
June 13 2019
New Zealand flag
Māori flag
I think geographical NZ is a lot like Canada but shrunk in size plus adding more rain forests, volcanoes, extreme adventures and friendliness. It has closer ties and more similarities to the UK.
I think they have come closer to finding the right balance of colonial and indigenous heritage and are strong protectors of the environment. Like Canada there is much more needed to find and maintain these balances.
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The name “New Zealand” comes from “Zeeland” (which translates to “Sealand”) in Dutch, after it was sighted by Dutch Explorer Abel Tasman. Zeeland is a province of the Netherlands.
New Zealand is called “Aotearoa” in the Māori language. It means “Land of the Long White Cloud”.
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Australian flag
Australian Indigenous flag
Austrialia is similar in many ways to Canada and New Zealand but it has some amazing differences.
Like NZ it has closer ties and more similarities to the UK. I loved the people as much as the country.
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The name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning “southern”, and specifically from the hypothetical Terra Australis postulated in pre-modern geography. The name was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders from 1804, and it has been in official use since 1817, replacing “New Holland” as the name for the continent.
Australia is colloquially known as “the Land Down Under” or “Down Under” from the country’s position in the Southern Hemisphere, at the antipodes of the United Kingdom. The term was popularised internationally by the 1980 song of the same name by Men at Work.[32] Aka “Straya” (“Australia” pronounced in an exaggerated Strine manner), and “Aussie“, which is often used as a demonym, but occasionally extended to the country as a whole (especially in New Zealand).[33]
There is no one Indigenous name for the whole of Australia. Indigenous people were diverse and had multiple languages. Most Indigenous peoples had names for their own traditional lands and for the earth but not for the continent known today as Australia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Australia
