When the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman arrived in mainland Australia in 1644, he looked around and said something along the lines of, "Well, this looks a bit like Holland, so I'll name it New Holland".
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That name stuck around for more than 100 years until James Cook arrived in 1770 and said something like, "Nah, this looks more like the South of Wales, so I'll call it New South Wales."
Of course the names ignored the fact that neither Holland nor South Wales had massive great deserts or enormous rainforests.
And just the sheer size difference is pretty mind-boggling.
Australia has a land area of 7.688 million square kilometres.
The smallest Australian state is Tasmania, which is 50 per cent larger that all of Holland, and more than three times the size of all of Wales.
Yes, well done early explorers who clearly forgot their measuring sticks.
Or maybe it just showed that the early white explorers were really unimaginative with allocating names.
But it is not just in Australia, as the world seems full of places just called the New something or other.
There's New Zealand, New York, New Jersey, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, New Hampshire, New Orleans, New Mexico, New Delhi, New Guinea and New Brunswick.
There are even a few countries boasting areas known as New England, and the occasional New London or two.
At the moment there seems to be many people keen to revisit and rewrite history, so can we look back at these unimaginative names and realise countries and areas can exist and be valued in their own rights, not as the New anything?
And I'm sure the football fans would agree, as after all screaming out "Go New South Wales" is pretty awkward and ungainly.
It's a bit like the flag debate, where people object to having the flag of another country on the Australian Flag.
Yet we have the name of a foreign land taking up most of the name of our most populous state.
It also begs the question whether everything old is new again.
