I have also looked up, out of curiosity, the name of New Zealand, because my best friend lives over there right now, and, the old Maori name, which is also used by current day kiwis in NZ English, is "Aotearoa", (meaning "the land of the long white cloud"). When Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first sighted NZ in 1642, he called it "Staten Landt", thinking it was part of South America ! In 1645, some Dutch cartographers, (mapmakers), renamed it "Nova Zeelandia" after the Dutch province of Zeeland, and later British explorer James Cook named it in English, New Zealand.