The story
- Middle Dutch · derived fromSêelant
- English todayNew Zealand
Partial calque of Dutch Nieuw-Zeeland (literally “new Zeeland”), nieuw calqued as new, Zeeland borrowed as the respelling Zealand to parallel the historical exonym, after the Dutch settlement in Batavia, which in turn had been named after the Dutch province of Zeeland, from Middle Dutch Sêelant, equivalent to zee (“sea”) + land (“land”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.