Netherlands (terminology)
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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 predominate) terms for these are 'Nederland', 'Nederlanders' and 'Nederlands', although they are occasionally (colloquially) called 'Holland', 'Hollanders' and 'Hollands'.
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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 confederation comprised of seven provinces. The name in the Dutch language is Nederland (low country).
The origins of the name Netherlands are Low Germanic. Between 1348 and 1566 the Netherlands were part of Burgundy (as the Burgundian Netherlands) and later the Habsburg empire (as the Seventeen Provinces). They named their territorries at the river Rhine die "Oberen Rheinlande" (Upper Rhine Lands) and the "Niederen Rheinlande" (Lower Rhine Lands) (compare the geographic terms Oberrhein (Upper Rhine) and Niederrhein (Lower Rhine)). The first were territorries in Alsace, Lorraine, Swabia and Switzerland, the latter were the parts near the delta of the river (Holland, Flanders, Zeeland etc.). During history the part "Rhein" in the terminology passed and the result was: die Niederlande.[citation needed]
[edit] Holland
In languages other than Dutch, including English, Holland is commonly and incorrectly 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. 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.
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.
[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), Suriname, and the Dutch Antilles.
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.
Fascists in the 1930s who sought to "re-unite" the Dutch language area called it Dietsland.
In the United States, the term "Dutch" has in the past been used instead of "Deutsch" to indicate German origin - e.g. Dutch Schultz, Honus Wagner (The Flying Dutchman), the Pennsylvania Dutch, and so forth.
[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 was called Greater Netherlands by irredentists who sought to unite it. This historical region also was referred to as "The Netherlands" in English.[citation needed] 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), Holanda (Spanish), Olanda (Italian). This failure to distinguish between "Holland" and "the Netherlands" leads to difficulty when contasting "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, 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". The same applies to the Dutch air force, which is called the "Royal Netherlands Air Force" (RNAF).
[edit] Netherlands-Related Naming Issues
New Zealand was named after the Dutch province of Zeeland by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who also lent his name to the island of Tasmania. He also assigned 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.
Another Dutch colony town, New Amsterdam, was renamed New York after the United Kingdom took it over. A nearby 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 village of Breukelen and Flushing is named after the Dutch town of Vlissingen. The Canadian city 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.
Many cities in the southern regions of Africa also still have Dutch names, after periods of colonization and/or settlement by the Netherlands and later Belgium. Among them are the South African cities of Bloemfontein ("Flower Fountain", or better: "Flower's Well") and Johannesburg ("Fort of John"), the Namibian capital Windhoek ("Windy Corner", but derived form Winterhoek: "Winter's Corner") and the city of Walvisbaai ("Whale Bay").
The city Jakarta in the former Dutch colony Indonesia was renamed Batavia in 1619, which is Latin for Low Land or Low Country. There are still several cities named Batavia, in Suriname, and 4 in the US, in the states Illinois, Iowa, New York and Ohio. New Amsterdam is also still the name of many small towns and islands around the globe.
The Dutch raised numerous new towns in Suriname ( the former Dutch Guyana), many of whom where named after cities in the home land - such as Wageningen and Groningen - or given Dutch names - such as Lelydorp and Nieuw Amsterdam.
