How Australia Got Its Name

Here's two fun facts I couldn't fit into the video:

The earliest recorded Europeans to set foot on Australia were two sailors who attempted a mutiny on the Batavia and got themselves marooned. I guess Australians have all been criminals since day one.
Another neutral name made for Australia that was gaining traction around the same time was Ulimaroa, which more or less has its origins from the indigenous Australians.

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

[funndude]

So Australia does have a connection with Austria! I knew it!

[DeanBee]

So what you're telling me is australia's name is basically a typo on a pun.

[s]

so my country's name was a typo.




seems legit

[andc]

We can dig deeper in etymology.
Austrialia is a weird merger of Austria and Australis. But surprisingly these two words are distant cognates.
Austria is a latinization of Ostarreich, meaning "eastern kingdom". "Ostar" is the word for "east", which are obviuos cognates. They both come from Proto-Germanic *austraz, meaning "east, dawn". This term derived from Proto-Indo-European *aus, which meant "to shine, burn, dry".
Australis, from Latin, meant "southern". But this derives from PIE *aus, too. In fact Romans considered south as the land where the Sun is shining brighter, and furthermore they experienced that the southern they travelled, the dryer the climate, so the word was particularly fitting.
In conclusion "Australia" comes from two geographic names, referring respectively to east and south, which ultimately both derived from a single PIE word meaning "to shine". Hence, we could say that Australia is the "shining land".

[Marios-brhm]

We as greeks always wanted to go to australia for some reason even ancients ahahhaa

[golden_smaug]

I thought it was Australia just for being like the southern continent, but this enlightened me! Congratulations and thanks!

[Ronja_the_fairy]

4:36
"there is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude"

16 years later they dicovered Antarctica.

[peregrination]

My mom's family is Austrian. Living in the US and Canada, people can never seem to know the difference between Austria and Australia. In all irony, there's actually a connection.

[chrislee]

at 4:37 Capt Flinders in 1804 mentions there's "no probability" of finding a body of land "of equal extent" in a "more southern latitude". Ironically, the continent of Antarctica had been sighted about 30 years earlier, and would be explored on foot for the first time just 17 years later. Of course, it wasn't known to be a continent until sometime later still, but it's pretty funny that after searching for almost 2 millennia for Terra Australis Europeans gave up and named a different continent that just a few decades before finding the real one.

[a.b.]

Who came here after hearing sri sri Ravi shankar statement about name origin of Australia. "Astralya" 🤣🤣🤣

[saulpinedaalatriste]

Fun fact: George Shaw also was the one who first described the platypus

[Rudrugo]

2:49 Pedro Fernandes de Queirós was NOT Spanish. He was working for Spain, but he was Portuguese. That name is so not Spanish!

[ShakeTheBox]

Well I learned a lot! I hope this channel takes off soon. Looks great!

[diogogomes]

You seem to have forgotten the role of portuguese saylors on mapping australia

[tenhirankei]

The botanists that came there also lead to the naming of an area being referred to as Botany Bay.

[DAToft]

3:24 You can even see that he initially wrote the missing "i", but wrote an "a" to cover over it!

[otterofglory]

I thought that “Australia” was British for “prison”

[cogithefool]

Dammit Cicero, you had done enough for us

[darkalligraph]

Poor Tasmania...


Also you gained 15k subs in around a day which is amazing!
Last time I saw your channel you were at 50k. Now you're at 66k!!
Wow!

[youwilldie]

Pedro Fernandes de Queirós was actually Portuguese the thing is portugal was in a union with Spain back then who was In a union with Austria.