Netherlands (terminology)
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- For other uses of the word Netherlands, see Netherlands (disambiguation).
The Netherlands are 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 sometimes 'Holland'), while the people and the language are called 'Dutch'. Note that in Dutch the terms for these are 'Nederland', 'Nederlanders' and 'Nederlands'.
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[edit] 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 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 Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was a loose federation comprised of seven provinces. The name in the Dutch language is Nederland (low country).
[edit] Holland
Holland is commonly used as a synonym for the Netherlands as a whole, while actually it just refers to the central-western part of the country. This part consists of two of the country's twelve provinces, namely North Holland and South Holland.
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 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.[citation needed]
The name Holland ultimately stems from "holt land" ("wooded land"). A popular, but incorrect, fake etymology holds that it is derived from "hol land" ("hollow land"), inspired by the low-lying geography of the region.
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).
[edit] 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) Surinam and the Dutch Antilles. The European part is sometimes called Dietsland by those who seek to unite it.
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.
[edit] 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 is sometimes called Whole-Netherlands by people who seek 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.
[edit] 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), Olanda (Romanian) or Belanda (Indonesian), Hollanda (Turkish), Ollandia (Ολλανδία) (Greek), Olanda (Italian).
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), Yr Iseldiroedd (Welsh).
In Finnish, German, and Czech both names are used. In German, the country is called either die Niederlande or Holland, in Finnish the country is called either Hollanti or Alankomaat, which is a translation of "the Netherlands". In the Czech Republic, the country is called either Nizozemsko which is a translation of "the Netherlands" or Holandsko.
[edit] Proposed Solutions
Some solutions among some English-speakers have been proposed to solve the confusion surrounding the country's name. One could refer to residents of the Netherlands as "Netherlanders" to call the language "Netherlandish", use the adjective "Netherlands" or "Netherlandic".[citation needed] Although these last terms are not very pleasing to the ear, they are the most accurate of the proposed terms, and are more similar to the Dutch term ("Nederlanders").
Dutch diplomats indeed use the adjective "Netherlands" to prevent the Dutch/Deutsch confusion. They speak of "The Netherlands embassy" instead of "The Dutch embassy".
[edit] Netherlands-Related Naming Issues
New Zealand was named after the Dutch province 'Zeeland' by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. He also assigned the name New Holland to the country now known as Australia, which name it retained for 150 years until the UK renamed it in 1824. Another Dutch colony town, New Amsterdam, was renamed New York after the United Kingdom took it over. A closeby Dutch settlement, New Haarlem, was incorporated into the new city of New York to become the Harlem neighbourhood. New York City's borough Brooklyn is named after the Dutch city of Breukelen and Flushing is named after the Dutch town of Vlissingen. The Canadian town Vancouver was named after George Vancouver, whose name is most likely to be derived from "van Coevorden", meaning "from Coevorden", a city in the northeast of the Netherlands.
