The first European visitor to New Zealand, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, named the islands ''Staten Land'', believing they were part of the  that Jacob Le Maire had sighted off the southern end of South America. Hendrik Brouwer proved that the South American land was a small island in 1643, and Dutch cartographers subsequently renamed Tasman's discovery  from Latin, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. This name was later anglicised to ''New Zealand''. It has no relationship to Zealand in Denmark.