Why do some citizens refer to there homeland / nation as mother as in Mother Russia and some use the Fatherland? WWII Germany comes to mind.
I’m not sure there’s a straightforward answer to this question, other than ‘just because’.
Fatherland relates to ancestry, ie land of my ancestors, or Land of My Fathers (a term Welsh people still use).
Motherland tends to come from countries which use a feminine gender for the noun ‘country’. As we know, English doesn’t apply random masculine or feminine genders to nouns, but many languages do. Why any given noun is masculine or feminine is a bit of a mystery really.
But the German for country is “Land,” a feminine noun, even though the Germans famously refer to the Fatherland. Estonian also does the Fatherland deal, although “isamaa” is femine, as does Latin with its feminine “patria”.
Yeah, I don´t think there’s a clear connection between the genders. In Swedish we say “fädernesland”, although Sweden (as well as the word land) is grammatically a neuter (“Our Sweden” = “vårt Sverige”). And the personification of Sweden is Moder Svea.
Correction: " Das Land" in German is not feminine, but neuter. Of course this also doesn’t confirm the theory.
ETA: just wanted to add that conflating grammatical gender with natural gender almost never makes sense. They are different things.