The explorers of the colonial era were brave men, but not necessarily creative. That is why the names of so many places in the New World are limited to honoring European cities: New York comes from York (England), New Orleans from Orleans (France) and ... New Zealand?
The first European explorer to land in what is now known as New Zealand was a Dutchman named Abel Tasman. The purpose of his expedition was to determine if "New Holland" (today Australia) was part of a gigantic imaginary continent known as Terra Australis. The Dutch East India Company hoped to find an unexplored continent that could be commercially exploited, or at least a strait that would lead them to the Pacific from New Guinea.
Tasman did not achieve any of those goals, but went down in history to discover the island of Tasmania and New Zealand, and to see the Fiji Islands.
After exploring Tasmania, which today bears its name but was then dubbed "Van Diemen's Land" (in honor of the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies), Tasman continued sailing eastwards and landed another portion of land on December 13 Of 1642. Confused by the long journey, he thought that he was in the southern tip of Argentina (a place known as the island of the States) and called that site "Staten Landt". Tasman bordered the land to the north and east, where one of its ships was attacked by Maori and four of its men were killed. The sailor named that place "Bay of the Assassins" (now Golden Bay) and continued north, not realizing that he was actually touring the southern and northern islands of an archipelago we now call New Zealand.
It was the Dutch cartographers Hendrik Brouwer and Joan Blaeu who realized that these large islands were not part of South America. Blaeu then called them "Nieuw Zeeland", in tribute to the most western province of the Netherlands, Zeeland (which in Dutch means "land of the sea") also consists of several islands surrounded by sea.
The archipelago remained relatively unexplored by the western ones until the 1770s. Englishman James Cook made three trips to Nieuw Zeeland and was responsible for anglicanising the name to "New Zealand". After Cook, New Zealander territory was visited by numerous whalers and seals, and commercial vessels from Europe and the United States. Today New Zealand is one of those cases in which "the new" became better known than the original to which it refers.
SUMMARY LEVEL 5: in honor of a province of Netherlands, Zeeland