G'morning Bon, 

 BS>> Aha. Ours is beeing called "Sjalland" in the native
 BS>> langauge, but Zealand in English. Zeeland means "The land
 BS>> of lakes" in Dutch? "Sjalland" can't be
translated to that.
 BS>> Not sure of what it means acutally.

 MM> That's interesting -  Apparently Tasman thought he'd found an
 MM> extension of South America and named NZ "Staten Landt" at first,
 MM> but when SA was shown not to extend to the west, the Dutch renamed
 MM> NZ  "Nieeuw Zeeland" in 1643 - and it stuck.

 BS> Aha. But Tasmania is a part of Austrailia right?

Yup - he discovered the Tasmanian island while exploring the 
Australian coast;  not sure that he worked out what the Aussie 
beaches were part of,  but the island got named after him.

 MM> "The land of lakes" is not so silly, either.  The bits of NZ that
 MM> Tasman visited feature a set of islands that hid the Cook Strait
 MM> entirely from the Dutch explorers,  and gave Captain Cook a false
 MM> steer into the bargain.

 BS> false steer?

An English phrase meaning "misdirected him".

Tasman's map of the area suggested no strait,  and Cook's first 
impression supported that view until Cook (unwilling to risk his 
ship sailing in and around all the little islands) found a tall 
hill that gave him a view of his Straits.

 MM> But I suspect that some bit of Holland or its neighbourhood was
 MM> also called `Zeeland' at the time  -  and somewhere close to the
 MM> true antipode of NZ would make a lot of sense of the `New'...

 BS> Right. :) "Zealand" is a state/county in the netherlands.
 BS> It located in the south west of Holland no far from Belgium
 BS> border.

Aha - the Antipode !  And hence the name "New Zealand" !

:-)) 
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