# Dutch word **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 11, 2002, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091 "2002-12-11T21:02:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![flabbygirlyman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/45deac/32.png) [@flabbygirlyman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flabbygirlyman)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/1 "2002-12-11T21:02:37Z")
I have never been to europe , but I can see that the people that we in English speaking countries call **Dutch** don’t refer to themselves that way . They use the word “Hollander” , a logical choice since Holland is the name of their country . My question ,though, is whether the word, **Dutch** , is an entirely English word or is it a historically “Dutch” word which English has borrowed? And do the Dutch people ever use that word in every day language ? I hope that some"Dutch" person will give his input . ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/2 "2002-12-11T21:09:43Z")
“Dutch” is a corruption of “Deutsch,” whch means “German.” It’s common and accepted here in the U.S., but can be a little rankling to those Nederlanders who dislike Germans. “Holland” is the name of a part (actually two parts) of the Netherlands; it’s common to use it for the whole country, but not strictly correct. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/3 "2002-12-11T21:19:41Z")
And the word _Dutch_ was once much more broadly applied, and meant any person or dialect from the present-day-Netherlands all the way down to the Alps. The Pennsylvania Dutch (really German) religious communities in the U.S. are good examples of that. They mostly came, IIRC, from southern Germany and Switzerland\*, but Dutch meant German in those days so that was what their neighbors called them. \*in fact the founder of one such group, the Hutterites, was the Swiss John Hutter. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/4 "2002-12-11T22:23:12Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s common and accepted here in the U.S., but can be a little rankling to those Nederlanders who dislike Germans. Coldy may back you up on that, but my experience was completely different. I went into a shop, there, looking for a translating dictionary and asked the owner if he had a _Nederlanse/Engels_ word book and was haughtily reprimanded that I wanted an English/Dutch Dictionary. When I _did_ buy one (not there) the English title was “Engish/Dutch.” ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/5 "2002-12-11T22:26:40Z")
Yeah, the LANGUAGE that people in the Netherlands speak is Dutch. Just like we don’t speak American, they don’t speak Netherlander. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/6 "2002-12-11T22:38:28Z")
The name “Dutch” is related to “Teutonic.” In Modern Dutch, _Duits_ means ‘German’. (The Dutch call themselves _Nederlands_.) “Dutch/_Deutsch/Duits_” comes from Middle Dutch _Duutsch_, corresponding to Old English _þeodisc_, Old Saxon _thiudisc_, and Gothic _þiudisko_, and all these go back to the Common Germanic form \*_ **theudiskaz** _, meaning ‘of the people’. The “people” being the Germanic people, the Teutons. From this Germanic source also comes Italian _tedesco_, ‘German’. In Old English _þeod_ means ‘people’ (recall the cavalry companies of Rohan in _The Lord of the Rings_ were called _éothéod_, literally ‘horse people’ [Old English _éo_ ‘horse’ is related to Latin _equus_ and Sanskrit _aSva_]). This is cognate with Gothic _þiuda_, ‘people’. All these are from the Proto-Indo-European \*_ **teuta** _, ‘people, tribe’. Other Indo-European words from this root are Old Irish _tuatha_ (as in the mythical _Tuatha De Danann_ ‘the people of the Goddess Danu’), Lithuanian _tauta_ ‘nation’, Oscan-Umbrian _touto_, ‘city’, Welsh _tud_, ‘territory’. This PIE root is clearly derived from \*_ **teut** _- ‘meet, join’, as social groupings like tribes and nations are made by the joining of people. It also produced the Latin _totus_ ‘all, whole’, giving us words like _total_ and _tutti frutti_. An extension of the root produced PIE \*teutonos, ‘ruler, chief, queen’, from whence come the Illyrian name Teutona, the Gaulish name Toutonos, and the Gothic word _þiudans_ ‘king’; the related Old English word is _þeoden_, which takes us again back to Rohan, where the king’s name is **Théoden.** ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2002, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/7 "2002-12-11T23:13:19Z")
That is absolutely spot-on, **Jomo Mojo**. Take the opening line of our national anthem: _“Wilhelmus van Nassouwe Ben ick van Duytschen Bloedt”_ (William of Nassau, am I of common blood) Here, _Duytschen_ is often mistaken for the modern Dutch _Duits_, meaning German. But it means “of the people” in middle Dutch. Mind you, most DUTCH people don’t even know this - they think it means “German” too. Don’t feel embarrassed. 🙂 Why did William call himself “of common blood”? Because the Netherlands was a Republic at the time, fighting the Spanish opression. William of Orange, as he’s known in history class, led the uprising that resulted in the liberation of the Netherlands, upon which he was pronounced King. The English word _Dutch_ is a bastardisation of the middle Dutch word _Duytsch_. The Dutch do not, as a rule, dislike Germans. There is some animosity alright, but some of you may be surprised that it mostly stems from us unjustly losing the 1974 football world cup final, rather than from WWII. The country is officially called _Koninkrijk der Nederlanden_ (“Kingdom of the Netherlands”), or the Netherlands for short. We use the singular version, and call it _Nederland_. The term Holland is a widely used but factually incorrect decription: it really only comprises the provinces Noord Holland and Zuid Holland. Logically, an inhabitant is called _Nederlander_ rather than _Hollander_, but both are used widely and interchangeably. We use the word “Duits” in everyday language (“German”), but not _Duytsch_ - it’s gone out of style, so to speak. So no, there is no modern Dutch equivalent of the English word “Dutch”. At the time the Pennsylvania Dutch settled down, The Netherlands had been in existance for quite a while. Why they settled on “Dutch” rather than “German”, I don’t know. The Dutch were busy running _Nieuw Amsterdam_ at the time, a village commonly known as New York these days. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2002, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/8 "2002-12-12T00:21:58Z")
So if _Dutch_ meaning “Netherlander” and _Deutsch_ meaning “German” are derived from the same root, then…? And **Coldfire** , I didn’t mean that Dutch folk dislike Germans (though Mom does, a bit), I meant that those who _do_ are more likely than those who don’t to get huffy about being called “Dutch.” ---
**Author:** ![flabbygirlyman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/45deac/32.png) [@flabbygirlyman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flabbygirlyman)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2002, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dutch-word/142091/9 "2002-12-12T00:48:06Z")
Thanks ,Coldfire. I knew that “Dutch” and ''Deutsch" and “teutonic” were all related to each other. But I never knew that the english use of the word “Dutch” stems from “Duytsch” and William of Orange’s successful revolt against Spanish rule. This quite nicely answers my question.