Did Matthew Flinders name Australia

Answer 1

No-one sent Matthew Flinders to Australia. In 1795, he arrived in Australia as a midshipman on the same ship that Captain Hunter sailed on to replace Arthur Phillip as Governor of New South Wales.

Answer 2

Yes and no. This is not a straightforward question.

Matthew Flinders, who was the first known European explorer to circumnavigate the Australian continent in 1802, is credited with assigning the name 'Australia' to this continent although it did not immediately receive universal approval. He first proposed the name "Terra Australis" be adopted instead of "New Holland", the name by which the Dutch knew Australia, or "New South Wales", which Cook had named the eastern half when he claimed it for England. In 1814 when Flinders published his work 'A Voyage to Terra Australis', he used the term 'Australia' within the book. Around 1818, Governor Lachlan Macquarie, arguably the most influential man in Australia at the time, also requested that the name "Australia" be officially ascribed.

The name "Australia" comes from the Latin term Terra Australis meaning "land of the south". Often known as Terra Australis Incognita, i.e. "the unknown land of the South", it was the name given to the unknown continent believed to exist south of the equator. This unknown land was included on European maps from the 15th to the 18th century.

Portuguese sailor Pedro Fernández de Quirós (in portuguese Fernandes de Queirós), searched for this new land in 1606 while serving in the spanish navy, and called it Austrialia del Espíritu Santo or 'Great South Land of the Holy Spirit'. The word "Austrialia", slightly different from the current "Australia", was a mixture formed by "Austria" (the country of origin of the Habsburg dinasty) and "Austral" ("Southern"). In those times the current nations of Spain and Portugal were under the rule of the same crown. The word Austrialia was intended to be an homage to the ruling monarchs. Different variations on the name were used in many languages. There was, however, a German document dating back to 1545 describing a southern land mass as Australia. 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.

Simple answer: Matthew Flinders did not actually name Australia. However, Flinders was the one who first proposed the name "Terra Australis", which became "Australia", the name adopted in 1824, ten years after his death.