Matthew Flinders gave the Great Barrier Reef its modern English name after surveying it in the early 19th century.
Flinders was an English navigator and cartographer who circumnavigated Australia in 1801–1803. During that voyage, he charted much of the Australian coastline and described the extensive offshore reefs as the “Great Barrier Reefs.”
James Cook had encountered the reef in 1770 when HMS Endeavour struck it, but Cook did not give the modern name to the whole system. His voyage helped bring the reef to European attention, while Flinders’s later surveying and mapping helped establish its broader geographic identity.
The name originally referred to a complex of reefs forming a barrier offshore. Today, “Great Barrier Reef” commonly describes the entire interconnected reef region along Queensland’s coast.