Where did the name Australia come from?

Travel Info
Where did the name Australia come from?

Travel Tips

it comes from terra australis, meaning southern land. they believed that a land mass was needed to balance the globe. it was 1609 when Dirck Hartog came to Australia and it was over 100 years before James Cook arrived.
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Although Australia was not known to the Western world, it did exist in late medieval European logic and
mythology: a "Great Southern Land", or Terra Australis, was thought necessary to balance the weight of the northern landmasses of Europe and Asia. Terra Australis often appeared on early European maps as a large, globe-shaped mass in about its correct location, although no actual discoveries were recorded by Europeans.

Its sort were it came from. best i could do.
http://www.australia-migration.com/page/...
Australia, meaning southern land, was first used by Matthew Flinders in the early 1800s.
"Austral" means "south" just as "boreal" means "north". In Latin, auster was the south wind while boreas was the north wind. We see both uses clearly with the aurora. In the north it is the aurora borealis while in the south it is the aurora australis. The explorer Matthew Finders who circumnavigated Australia and mapped the coastline was the first to use the name "Australia" on one of his maps.