How did Australia come to get its name.?

Answer 1

It is a shortened form of Terra Australis

Answer 2

I copied this straight from wikipedia :)

The name "Australia" is derived from the Latin Australis, meaning of the South. Legends of an "unknown land of the south" (terra australis incognita) dating back to Roman times were commonplace in mediæval geography, but they were not based on any actual knowledge of the continent. The Dutch adjectival form Australische was used by Dutch officials in Batavia to refer to the newly discovered land to the south as early as 1638. The first use of the word "Australia" in the English language was a 1693 translation of Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Découverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe, a 1692 French novel by Gabriel de Foigny under the pen name Jacques Sadeur.[1] Alexander Dalrymple then used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean (1771), to refer to the entire South Pacific region. In 1793, George Shaw and Sir James Smith published Zoology and Botany of New Holland, in which they wrote of "the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland."

The name "Australia" was popularised by the 1814 work A Voyage to Terra Australis by the navigator Matthew Flinders, who was the first recorded person to circumnavigate Australia. Despite its title, which reflected the view of the British Admiralty, Flinders used the word "Australia" in the book, which was widely read and gave the term general currency. Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales subsequently used the word in his dispatches to England. In 1817, he recommended that it be officially adopted. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as "Australia".

The word "Australia" in Australian English is pronounced as /ə.ˈstɹæɪ.ljə, -liː.ə, -jə/.

Answer 3

It used to be called Gondwanaland.

True.

Answer 4

all three above are correctomundo....... cant argue with those ones.