Terra Australis

Terra Australis (Latin for 'Southern Land') was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the Southern Hemisphere.

Names

Other names for the hypothetical continent have included Terra Australis Ignota and Terra Australis Incognita (transl. the unknown most southern land), and Terra Australis Nondum Cognita (transl. the most southern land not yet known). Other names were Brasiliae Australis (transl. the most southern Brazil), and Magellanica (transl. the land of Magellan). Matthias Ringmann called it the Ora antarctica (transl. antarctic land) in 1505, and Franciscus Monachus called it the Australis orę (Austral country). In medieval times it was known as the Antipodes.

The French writer Guillaume Postel proposed the name Chasdia, after Noah's grandson Cush, for the hypothetical continent on the basis of it having dark-skinned inhabitants (Cush's traditional descendants).

Change of name

During the 18th century, today's Australia was not conflated with Terra Australis, as it sometimes was in the 20th century. Captain Cook and his contemporaries knew that the sixth continent (today's Australia), which they called New Holland, was entirely separate from the imagined (but still undiscovered) seventh continent (today's Antarctica).

In the 19th century, the colonial authorities in Sydney re-allocated the name Australia to New Holland and its centuries-old Dutch name eventually fell into disuse.