How did Tasmania get its name?

Tasmania gets its name from discover Abel Tasman. However, the original name of Australia’s smallest state was Anthony Van Diemen’s Land.

Tasmania is Australia’s smallest state, with a population of around 540,000. It is not a separate country as some assume.

But Tasmania has a quite unusual name, so where does that name come from?

Original name of Tasmania

To add to the confusion, Tasmania hasn’t always been called Tasmania. The first recorded sighting of the island was in November 1642, when Dutch explorer Abel Tasman arrived just north of Macquarie Harbour on the west coast. He would later sail around the north the island, through the Bass Strait.

He managed to miss the great southern continent he was looking for, but later in the voyage became the first European to sight New Zealand.

Tasman called the island he had discovered Anthony Van Diemen’s Land. This was in honour of Anthony Van Diemen, the governor of the Dutch East Indies who sponsored the mission.

When did Tasmania’s name change?

This, obviously, was something of a mouthful. By the time the British set up a colony on the Derwent River, the island’s name had been shortened to Van Diemen’s Land.

Over time, the settlers began to refer to Tasmania, less of a mouthful than Van Diemen’s Land and honouring the island’s discoverer. By the 1830s, the name Tasmania and term “Tasmanian” were fairly widespread.

The official renaming of the island coincided with the end of convict transportation. The process started in 1853, when the last convict ship was sent. Van Diemen’s Land ceased to be a prison colony a year later. The name change from Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania happened on the 1^st of January, 1956.

The Tasmanian Parliament has a good record of the timeline, if you’re that interested.

Places named after Abel Tasman

Of course, Tasmania isn’t the only place named after Abel Tasman. Most significantly, the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand is too. When something is referred to as trans-Tasman, it means between Australia and New Zealand, not between Tasmania and the Australian mainland.

How did Tasmania get its name?

Original name of Tasmania

When did Tasmania’s name change?

Places named after Abel Tasman

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