Looks like this is what you want

    int columns = 2;
    int rows = 2;

    String[][] newArray = new String[columns][rows];
    newArray[0][0] = "France";
    newArray[0][1] = "Blue";

    newArray[1][0] = "Ireland";
    newArray[1][1] = "Green";

    for(int i = 0; i < rows; i++){
        for(int j = 0; j < columns; j++){
            System.out.println(newArray[i][j]);
        }
    }

Here I'll explain the code:

This declares the size of your new 2D array. In Java (and most programming languages), your first value starts at 0, so the size of this array is actually 2 rows by 2 columns

    int columns = 2;
    int rows = 2;

Here you are using the type String[][] to create a new 2D array with the size defined by [rows][columns].

    String[][] newArray = new String[columns][rows];

You assign the values by its placement within the array.

    newArray[0][0] = "France";
    newArray[0][1] = "Blue";

    newArray[1][0] = "Ireland";
    newArray[1][1] = "Green";

Looping through i would loop through the rows, and looping through j would loop through the columns. This code loops through all rows and columns and prints out the values in each index.

    for(int i = 0; i < rows; i++){
        for(int j = 0; j < columns; j++){
            System.out.println(newArray[i][j]);
        }
    }

Alternatively, assignment can be a one-liner:

    String[][] newArray = {{"France", "Blue"}, {"Ireland", "Green"}};

But I don't like this way, as when you start dealing with larger sets of data (like 10,000+ points of data with many columns), hardcoding it in like this can be rough.

The Arrays class defines a couple of useful methods

• Arrays.toString - which doesn't work for nested arrays
• Arrays.deepToString - which does exactly what you want

String[][] aastr = {{"hello", "world"},{"Goodbye", "planet"}};
System.out.println(Arrays.deepToString(aastr));

Gives

  [[hello, world], [Goodbye, planet]]

You can use the following class which stores your data in a HashMap and is able to convert it to a two dimensional string array.

public class ArrayStructure {
    private HashMap<Point, String> map = new HashMap<Point, String>();
    private int maxRow = 0;
    private int maxColumn = 0;

    public ArrayStructure() {
    }

    public void add(int row, int column, String string) {
        map.put(new Point(row, column), string);
        maxRow = Math.max(row, maxRow);
        maxColumn = Math.max(column, maxColumn);
    }

    public String[][] toArray() {
        String[][] result = new String[maxRow + 1][maxColumn + 1];
        for (int row = 0; row <= maxRow; ++row)
            for (int column = 0; column <= maxColumn; ++column) {
                Point p = new Point(row, column);
                result[row][column] = map.containsKey(p) ? map.get(p) : "";
            }
        return result;
    }
}

Example code

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    ArrayStructure s = new ArrayStructure();
    s.add(0, 0, "1");
    s.add(1, 1, "4");

    String[][] data = s.toArray();
    for (int i = 0; i < data.length; ++i) {
        for (int j = 0; j < data[i].length; ++j)
            System.out.print(data[i][j] + " ");
        System.out.println();
    }
}

Output

1  
 4