How did Papua New Guinea get its name.?

Papua seems to have been the local name for the island before European colonisation - but its meaning is unclear. It may have meant something like "unorganised territory" (meaning it wasn't ruled by the sultans of the nearby islands) or it may have something to do with fuzzy hair (as a description of the islanders.

Europeans called the island New Guinea, because the people looked a bit like the people of Guinea in Africa - though Guinea originally meant most of West Africa, not just the current country with that name.

The island was divided between Dutch, British and Germans. What was Dutch New Guinea is now in Indonesia, and called Irian Jaya. In 1905 Britain transferred its part of the island to Australia, which renamed it the Territory of Papua, using the local name. After World War 1 the German part of the island was also administered by Australia (as a mandate), as the Territory of New Guinea. Those two territories later became independent as Papua New Guinea - combining the two names into one.

The island of New Guinea was so named because the first western explorers though the people looked similar to those in Guinea, West Africa.

It is the second largest island after Greenland and when Indonesia took over the western part in 1969, Australia continued to govern the eastern half of the island, calling it Papua New Guinea until it gained independence in 1975. Papua most likely refers to the peoples of the main islands and many surrounding islands who speak the so-called Papuan languages. It is said that there are between 700 and 850 languages in this group.