Most New Zealand place names have Māori or British origins. Both groups used names to commemorate notable people, events, places from their homeland, and their ships, or to describe the surrounding area. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the whole of New Zealand before the arrival of Europeans, but post-colonisation the name Aotearoa (commonly translated as 'long white cloud') has been used to refer to the whole country. Dutch cartographers named the islands Nova Zeelandia, the Latin translation of the Dutch Nieuw Zeeland (after the Dutch province of Zeeland). By the time of British exploration, the country's name was anglicised to New Zealand.