Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania

Tasman’s name for his boss

In 1642 the Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman named the land he sighted after his superior, Anthony van Diemen. The Aboriginal people, whom Tasman never met, knew it as Trowunna, Trowenna or Loetrouwitter.^[1]

The alternative, “Tasmania”, after Tasman himself, spread long before it was official. It appears beside “Van Diemen’s Land” on a London map of 1808, the first known use in print, and in the title of an 1823 guide for emigrants, Van Diemen’s Land, more properly called Tasmania. Coins, ships, clubs and newspapers took it up in the 1820s, and the Bishopric of Tasmania was proclaimed in 1842.^[1]

A convict name

Van Diemen’s Land was a penal colony, and from 1844 a mass movement grew up against the transportation of convicts there. The anti-transportationists made a point of calling the colony Tasmania.^[2] To them the new name would counter the “evil reputation” that clung to convict Van Diemen’s Land.^[1]

Britain decided in late 1852 to stop sending convicts, and the colony celebrated in August 1853.^[2] On 23 October 1854 the colony’s Legislative Council voted to petition Queen Victoria to replace Van Diemen’s Land with Tasmania, and she agreed in 1855.^[3][1]

The new name took effect on 1 January 1856, the same time as self-government, and the next day the colony celebrated with a Grand Tasmanian Regatta.^[1] It marked, as the Museum of Australian Democracy puts it, the closing of the door on the penal past.^[3]