Has Australia's name always been the same?

Answer 1

No.

The continent of Australia was first given the official name of Australia in 1824.

As a nation, Australia became the Commonwealth of Australia at Federation on 1 January 1901.

Originally, Australia was inhabited by Aborigines who had a grasp on their locality but did not concern themselves with the nature of the whole continent. They are not known to have had a name for the continent.

Once European exploration in the area commenced, Australia was initially known as Terra Australis Incognita, meaning "Unknown Southern land".

From the 1600s, the Dutch traders named the western half of the continent New Holland. But for many years, the continent was still referred to as Terra Australis Incognita on Dutch and Portuguese maps.

When Captain James Cook charted the eastern coast in 1770, he claimed it for England under the name ofNew South Wales. In between this time, some map-makers of the 1700s called it the Great South Land.

Matthew Flinders was the one who first proposed the name "Terra Australis", which became "Australia", the name adopted in 1824.