Episode 3 of 3
Name Change to Tasmania
- When
- 1 January 1856
- Where
- Van Diemen's Land
The colony officially changed its name to Tasmania in 1856 to honor Abel Tasman and dissociate the island from its convict past.
The Privy Council approved the colony changing its name from Van Diemen's Land to Tasmania. The name was officially changed on 1 January 1856 to honor European discoverer Abel Tasman and to remove the unsavoury link the name had with its penal settlements.
Sources
- Van Diemen's Land Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-31
- Tasmania Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-27
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.