NETHERLANDS (TERMINOLOGY)

The 'Netherlands' is known under 'various terms' both in English and other languages. These are used to describe the different overlapping geographical, linguistic and political areas of the Netherlands. This is often a source of confusion for people from other parts of the world. In English the country is called 'the Netherlands' (or frequently 'Holland'), while the people and the language are called 'Dutch'. Note that in Dutch the official (and predominant) terms for these are 'Nederland', 'Nederlanders' and 'Nederlands', although they are occasionally (colloquially) called 'Holland', 'Hollanders' and 'Hollands'.

Contents

The Netherlands

Holland

Dutch

Low Countries

Netherlandish

Other languages

Netherlands-related naming issues

See also

The Netherlands

"Netherlands" literally means "low countries" or "lowlands." It is the conventional short form used to describe the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Formally, this encompasses the European part of the Netherlands and its overseas dependencies, although usually it is used to describe solely the European part. The current Dutch dependencies are the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Historically Suriname and Indonesia were also part of Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The Netherlands is among a small number of countries which have a singular name for their country, while the English language uses a plural form. This plural convention is actually an archaic term, referring to the period 1581 to 1795 when the Dutch republic was a loose confederation of seven provinces. The name in the Dutch language is ''Nederland'' (low country) while the Dutch republic is often referred to as "Nederlanden" (low countries).
The origins of the name Netherlands are Germanic. Between 1348 and 1566 the Netherlands were part of Burgundy (as the Burgundian Netherlands) and later the Habsburg empire (as the Seventeen Provinces).

Holland

In languages other than Dutch, including English, ''Holland'' is used as a common but technically incorrect synonym for the Netherlands as a whole. Strictly speaking, it refers only to the central-western part of the country, which consists of two of the country's twelve provinces: North Holland and South Holland. This confusion between a part and its whole (pars pro toto) also exists with the names of other countries, such as Russia for the Soviet Union or England for the UK (see also British Isles terminology).
Historically Holland was the most powerful province of the Netherlands: the counts of Holland were also counts of Hainaut, Flanders and Zeeland between the 1200s and 1400s; during the period of the Dutch Republic the stadholder of Holland was the most powerful politician in the Netherlands, who often also was stadholder in other provinces; the cities in Holland were important trading cities, for instance of the six cities that made up the Dutch East India Company, five were in Holland. The two provinces making up Holland still remain demographically dominant - they house 37% of the Dutch population.
The name 'Holland' for the Netherlands is also used colloquially by the Dutch themselves, especially in relation to football (soccer), where the national team is sometimes cheered on with "Holland!". The term is also used for promotional purposes, because the name 'Holland' is better known worldwide.
In some provinces, especially Friesland, Groningen and Limburg, the word ''Hollander'' is only used in pejorative sense, to refer to the supposedly arrogant inhabitants of North and South Holland. People from these provinces usually do not appreciate being called ''Hollander''. In Flanders as well, the word ''Hollander'' is used in this pejorative sense.
The name Holland ultimately stems from "holt land" ("wooded land"). A popular, but incorrect, false etymology holds that it is derived from "''hol'' land" ("hollow land"), inspired by the low-lying geography of the region.

Dutch

Dutch is the term used to describe both the inhabitants of the Netherlands as well as its language. Dutch is not only spoken in the Netherlands, but also in Flanders, parts of northern France (around Dunkirk), Suriname, and the Dutch Antilles. Its southern dialects are sometimes called Flemish.
The English word "Dutch" is a cognate to the Dutch word ''dietsch'' and the German word ''Deutsch''. All these words have the same etymological origin. Both these terms derive from what in Common West Germanic was known as theodisca, which meant "(language) of the (common) people". During the early Middle Ages, the elite mostly used Latin and the common people used their local languages.
In the 1930s, Nazi Germany sought to "re-unite" the Dutch language area by referring to it as Dietsland.
In the United States, the term "Dutch" has in the past sometimes been used instead of "Deutsch" to indicate ''German'' origin - e.g. Dutch Schultz, Honus Wagner (''The Flying Dutchman''), the Pennsylvania Dutch, and so forth.

Low Countries

The term the Low Countries is often used to refer to the Netherlands, while it actually refers to the historical region ''de Nederlanden'': those principalities located on and around the mostly low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers. This area very roughly corresponds to the countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. This region was called Greater Netherlands by irredentists who sought to unite it. This historical region also was referred to as "The Netherlands" in English. Between 1579 and 1794 the area comprising present Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of northern France was called the Southern Netherlands (or the ''Spanish Netherlands'' between 1579 and 1713, the ''Austrian Netherlands'' after 1713, after the main possession of their Habsburg lord).
This region was united three times, in the Seventeen Provinces as a personal union during the 16th century, in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1830 under King William I, and as the BeNeLux customs union founded in 1944.

Netherlandish

The adjective Netherlandish refers to the time and place of the Low Countries. Most common is the use of this adjective when referring to paintings produced at the time by a group of painters, referred to as Early Netherlandish painting (in Dutch ''Vlaamse primitieven'', ''Flemish'' primitives).
Around the 16th century, the southern Catholic provinces were referred to as ''Flemish'' and the northern Protestant provinces as ''Dutch'', but art historians have become used to refer to Netherlandish art for art produced between 1400 and 1830.

Other languages

In most languages, the name for the country literally means 'low lands' or is a transliteration of 'Nederland' or 'Holland'.
The name "Holland", or derivations of it, is commonly used for the Netherlands in many languages. Sometimes it is even the official name of the country, e.g., ''Holland'' (הולנד) (Hebrew), ''Hélán'' (荷兰) (Chinese), and ''Oranda'' (オランダ) (Japanese), ''Holandia'' (Polish), ''Holandsko'' (Slovak), ''Olanda'' (Romanian) or ''Belanda'' (Indonesian), ''Hollanda'' (Turkish), ''Ollandia'' (Ολλανδία) (Greek), ''Holanda'' (Spanish), ''Olanda'' (Italian). This failure to distinguish between "Holland" and "the Netherlands" leads to difficulty when contrasting "Holland" with other parts of "the Netherlands" in these languages.
Other countries use a literal translation of "the Netherlands". This often becomes indistinguishable from "the Low Countries", e.g., ''les Pays-Bas'' (French), ''Los Países Bajos'' (Spanish), ''I Paesi Bassi'' (Italian), ''Os Países Baixos'' (Portuguese), ''Nizozemska'' (Slovenian), ''Yr Iseldiroedd'' (Welsh).
In Finnish, German, Czech, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, both names are used. In Finnish the country is called either ''Hollanti'' or ''Alankomaat'', which is a translation of "the Netherlands". In German, the country is called either ''die Niederlande'' or ''Holland'', while in in the Czech Republic, the country is called either ''Nizozemsko'' which is a translation of "the Netherlands" or, inofficially ''Holandsko''.

Netherlands-related naming issues

Abel Tasman gave the name New Holland to the continent now known as Australia, a name it retained for 150 years until the UK renamed it in 1824.

See also

★ Netherlands (disambiguation)