If France colonised New Zealand, what would it be called?

Given that the French didn't get much of a chance to claim New Zealand, due to being late and the Brits getting in there first. If France did get there early and managed to colonise New Zealand what would its name be?
 
New Zeeland? It's not like the British bothered to change its original Dutch name. No doubt, though, Wellington and Auckland would have different names depending on when they were founded.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
The thing is, that probably wouldn’t be until after Decolonization.

Not necessarily: the French did adopt local names for things a lot (though usually got them wrong), such as Soudan and Dahomey. If a French explorer manages to ask ‘what is this place’ or ‘where are you from’ to a Maori, that could conceivably carry back to Paris and get popularised.
 
Not necessarily: the French did adopt local names for things a lot (though usually got them wrong), such as Soudan and Dahomey. If a French explorer manages to ask ‘what is this place’ or ‘where are you from’ to a Maori, that could conceivably carry back to Paris and get popularised.

Then you need a POD before it was named New Zealand

See New Caledonia which the French kept the European given name
 
Not necessarily: the French did adopt local names for things a lot (though usually got them wrong), such as Soudan and Dahomey. If a French explorer manages to ask ‘what is this place’ or ‘where are you from’ to a Maori, that could conceivably carry back to Paris and get popularised.

Agreed. It's not like Illinois and a couple of other places in North America survived a French mangling (Illinois was originally Illinawek or somesuch, and the French screwed it up).

Nor were the French the only ones. Or the colonists, for that matter. Columbus originally named the ISLAND San Juan and the TOWN Puerto Rico. Enter a European cartographer's mistake in switching those two around and we've got an island called "Rich Port"
 
Agreed. It's not like Illinois and a couple of other places in North America survived a French mangling (Illinois was originally Illinawek or somesuch, and the French screwed it up).
Use of Nouvelle Zélande is attested since the XVIIIth century at latest in French maps.
New_Holland_Overview.png

Even "Ile des Trois Rois" (Three Kings Island) is attested, so I guess a lot of names would be roughly as IOTL at this point.
Now, some places might either keep the old name or be renamed eventually (such as Baie des Assassins, which is Golden Bay nowadays; or Cap Spigie, probably Fouldwind), but some usages were already quite present at this point.
 
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Not sure that's true. No one refers to it as Van Diemens Land anymore or Cathay or New Spain but as Tasmania, China and the West Coast/Mexico

So like I said earlier decolonization for New Spain to be Mexico.

Van Diemans land was the name for 30 years before they changed it and still named it after one of the original Europeans not giving it a native name.

China isn’t even the name Chinese give to china
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Then you need a POD before it was named New Zealand

See New Caledonia which the French kept the European given name

No you don’t. That’s just giving yourself unnecessary parameters based on one example. Say foul relations with the Dutch see Paris officially change the name, or the French name growing more popular among French people, among a billion other minor PODs. I highly doubt New Zeeland was irreparably ironed into the minds of the French public.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
IIRC the early French explorers (not sure if it was Surville or du Fresne) claimed New Zealand under the rather unimaginative name France Australe. So I'd guess that probably gets used officially for a colony that has a vague mandate for the south Pacific but it eventually devolves to the more specific geographic expression of Nouvelle Zelande for the island on which its primarily based.
 
Ma
Given that the French didn't get much of a chance to claim New Zealand, due to being late and the Brits getting in there first. If France did get there early and managed to colonise New Zealand what would its name be?
Maybe there could be a Maori French speaking aristocracy evolving under French colonial administration.
 
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