[2] The indigenous Peerapper name for the mountain is recorded as Roeinrim or Traoota munatta.

Tasman sailed his ships close to the coastal area which today encompasses the Southwest Conservation Area, south of Macquarie Harbour, but was unable to send a landing party ashore due to poor weather and did not make contact with any South West Tasmanian groups.

In their circumnavigation of Tasmania between 1798 and 1799, George Bass and Matthew Flinders named the Heemskirk Ranges mountains Mount Heemskirk and Mount Zeehan after Tasman's ships, the warship Heemskerck (itself named after Jacob van Heemskerck, whose surname means "from Heemskerk") and the 200-tonne (200-long-ton; 220-short-ton) fluyt Zeehaen (Old Dutch for "Sea Rooster") in honour of Tasman's voyage of exploration.

[4][5] Although Dutch in origin, Bass and Flinder's Anglicised naming of Mount Heemskirk and Mount Zeehan created some of the oldest British place names in Tasmania.

[note 1] The mountain and its surrounding high ground was also known as the Heemskirk mining area in the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s.