Usage of 오스트레일리아 and 호주

Question

오스트레일리아 seems to be derived from the English "Australia", while 호주 seems to be etymologically related to Japanese's 濠洲 (Gōshū). I don't know whether it's derived from Japanese, or they just share a common ancestor (Which Korean country names originate from Japanese? only mentions 호주 in a comment)

In which context is each of the two words used? Also, is the relative usage of 호주 versus 오스트레일리아 changing over time?

My initial suspicion was that if there's a non-English derived form and an English derived form, the latter would be used mainly in advertising to look hip and cool, or that newspapers would use hanja of the non-English form, but that doesn't seem to explain why both words exist in this case. I've mainly been taught the word 호주, but the Korean edition of Wikipedia uses 오스트레일리아 as the title of its article on the country and appears to use both forms within the article.

Answer 1

I'll answer your question in two parts.

In which context is each of the two words used?

They are practically same. If you say one in place of the other, it will have almost no effect. However, using 호주 instead of 오스트레일리아 avoids possible - and common - confusion between Austrailia and Austria.

However, one can argue that there is a difference. 호주, which is related to 濠洲 as mentioned in the original question, comes from 濠斯太剌利亞洲. The first 6 letters (濠斯太剌利亞) is the transliteration of Australia, and the last letter (洲) means Continent. So, some people argue that the 호주 is ambiguous like 'America' (Name of the continent OR Name of the country).

Nevertheless, 호주 is rarely used to mean the continent.

Is the relative usage of 호주 versus 오스트레일리아 changing over time?

오스트레일리아 is gaining more usage as the time goes by. However, it's hard to say if there is a clear winner between two. There are two conflicting factors:

• Tendency to prefer the phonetically shorter name (prefers 호주)
• Tendency to prefer the native(or English) name (prefers 오스트레일리아)

As a final thought, I'd like to point out that Australian Embassy, Republic of Korea uses 호주 instead of 오스트레일리아 on their Korean text.