Holland / Netherlands

I understand that Holland is only a part of the Netherlands, but why were dutch people (at the World Cup) wearing scarves saying “Nederland” but chanting “Hup, Holland Hup?”

We, in Britain usually refer to that country as Holland. Anyone know why?

A very confused Scotsman.:confused:

We do because they do, basically. It also rolls of the tongue better than “the Netherlands”. As for why they do, Holland is the most populous part of the country. Must piss off the rest of them, I imagine. At least we English don’t go around calling the UK “England”.

“Russian” rolls off the tongue a lot better than “Lirhuanian”, but I doubt the Lithuanians would refer to themselves that way.

Your point seems contestable on several fronts, such as the fact that Lithuania is not in Russia and nobody calls them Russians.

We, in Britain usually refer to that country as Holland. Anyone know why?

The name “Holland” has been used by the English from the early 14th century, but the name “Netherlands” didn’t come along until a century later. By then, “Holland” was firmly established in English, so it stuck.

English usage is what it is and technicalities can pound sand.

Oficially 2 of the 12 provinces in the Netherlands are called North and South Holland (which has a historical base from before it was “The Netherlands”.

It is the most populous area, but the real reason people mix the two up is that nobody really cares. For what it’s worth, I think most people here would do the same (to some extent) with England and the UK. I’m quite sure many people have said something along the lines of: “with murray England finally win wimbledon again”

My Mexican friends referred to the country Holanda, in anticipation of advancing that far in the World Cup. So the term Holland is widely circulated in other countries, as well, as a synomym for what is more properly Paisas Bajos in Spanish. The word Nederland in the Dutch language translates literally as “Low Country”.

It’s not uncommon to call a nation by its biggest component part.
Many people called the USSR Russia.
The ROC is usually called Taiwan, the nation’s biggest island

Most people are smart enough not to call an violent Glaswegian English,but it is common to use the prefix "Anglo-“ for the UKoGB&I’s international relations.

Edit Hey! I just realised, all my examples were acronyms

For a similar reason that the OP says “We, in Britain” instead of just Scotland or we in the entire UK. Or why “British” can refer to someone in NI or the Channel Islands when they aren’t part of the landmass (ignoring the political implications).

Netherlands does mean “low countries” in many languages, but “the Low Countries” also includes Belgium and adjacent areas.

Holland is two provinces, North and South Holland, which are together over a third of the country’s population and have the largest cities.

Synecdoche. And most people replace that word with something easier to pronounce!

But the point is that sometimes Dutch people themselves refer to their country as “Holland”. That is unusual. British people don’t call the UK “England”. As far as I know, citizens of the USSR didn’t use the term “Russia” to refer to the whole country. It is something foreigners do, not natives.

Interestingly, wikipedia has an article on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_(toponymy)

The football team has traditionally been referred to as “Holland”, and continue to be referred to as such, even as “The Netherlands” has become more common in English. The Times style guide, for example, says to use “The Netherlands”, except when they are referring specifically to Holland, or when talking about the football team.

But many of them do call it “Britain”. In fact, this usage is even official.

So, no, this is not something that only foreigners do.

The fact that it is an official name makes it different, no? Like it or not, it is correct to refer to the UK as “Britain”. Unless I am mistaken I don’t think “Holland” and “Russia” (OK, “Россия”) are or were acceptable official names of the Netherlands or the USSR, respectively.

I’ll concede that the term “Great Britain” should not really include Northern Ireland though, as it sometimes does.

On top of that the people are usually called Dutch, instead of Hollanders or Netherlanders.

It’s not the official name; the official name is “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, commonly abbreviated to “the United Kingdom” or “the UK”. “Britain” is employed as a synonym in official circles, but it has no formal legal status.

I don’t see that it is, unless you assign powers to regulate language to officials of the UK government, which personally I am not inclined to do.

But whether it’s “correct” or not is a bit of a red herring. It shows that referring to the whole by the name of a part is not something that only foreigners do.

That’s the opposite, people from a smaller part hijacking the word for the bigger part.

It’s equivalent to someone from the USA saying she’s American despite the independent country of Canada being part of the geographic landmass of America too.

All UK residents live in the British Isles so it is right to call them British.
Southern Ireland is part of the British Isles but is not currently part of the UK, so it’s rather impolite and stupid to call people from Dublin British.

It would be cool if we just called Americans “Californians…” or “Alaskans.”

To me “Netherlands” is the formal term used in the media. “Holland” is more historic or touristic.

Its a shame “Batavia” never took off (like Helvetia with Switzerland).

I wouldn’t directly compare ‘UK’ v ‘England’ with ‘Holland’ v ‘Netherlands’. The one is originally a local empire where one nation, the English, basically subjugated surrounding nations, the Scots, Welsh and Irish (of which they retain domain over part). This isn’t to say all the inhabitants of the UK view it as still being that kind of relationship, but it’s a historical fact that it once was. Hence the sensitivity, but ironically IME modern day Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish seldom object to being called that rather than British, nor to people saying they are from those countries rather than ‘the UK’. It seems only the English, some of them at least, who compulsively correct foreigners for saying who they are (ie the English) and where they’re from (England). And it’s not actually that grossly inaccurate to call the UK ‘England’ given how much of the population and GDP is in England. And it’s not inaccurate at all to call London the great city of England. That’s a fact. It’s also the capital of the UK, and at one time was the capital of a global British empire. But it was and is also factually accurate to call it the major city of England.

The English habit of correcting foreigners for calling them English will presumably intensify if the Scots should choose to leave the UK.

Holland v Netherlands has no such connotations of past imperial relationships among peoples in a union. They’re all Dutch. Holland is basically an alternate name for the country which also coincides with a historical region of the country included in the names of two modern provinces of the Netherlands. AFAIK people from the Netherlands sometimes call it Holland also, it’s not only English speakers who do.

I can’t think offhand though of a situation that is exactly like Holland v Netherlands, which UK/England is not IMO. Finland is sort of like in that a couple of the regions of Finland have Suomi (Finland in Finnish) in their names (Keski-Suomi and Varsinais-Suomi, Central Finland and Finland Proper), the others don’t, but Finland is also the name of the whole country. But there aren’t two different names in Finnish like Holland and Netherlands both exist in Dutch, Finland is the name of both the regions and the country in Swedish (and English).

Korea has two more or less co-equal names in its own language, Joseon and Hanguk, being the official names (or versions thereof) in DPRK and ROK in Korean. And both are recognized as names for the country in both halves, just one or the other subordinate. But both refer in principal to the whole country, not also to any particular region.

I have to point out that we in Ireland do not use the term “British Isles”.

“Britain” refers either to Brittany (a province of France), Wales, or the island otherwise known as Great Britain. “Great Britain” is so called to distinguish it from “Britain” in either of the lesser senses.

The term “British Isles” doesn’t appear until the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and is used to call attention to the political connection (then being strongly asserted) of those islands under the British crown. Naturally, in Ireland, this implication is not appreciated and we don’t think Ireland is British in any meaningful sense.

Northern Ireland residents who call themselves British do so, not because they consider that Ireland is part of the British Isles, but because their identity stresses the historical and current political connection to Great Britain that they have through the United Kingdom. For that reason whether a Northern Ireland resident calls himself “British” is a strong marker of political position and community identification. It has nothing to do with geography.

This is back to the history of language being what it is. Some people can always campaign to change it, others can resist.

I’m from the US and call myself American. Canadians aren’t Americans, they’re Canadians. If you don’t like that it’s fine as your opinion but it’s not going to change my (and the great majority of Americans’) usage, and you’re going to sound strange trying to make up anoter term for people or things from the United States.

Canadians themselves doing something similar when they sometimes, though in a friendly way to us Americans, call us the both of us collectively ‘North Americans’ (you seldom hear Americans use that term except in connection with Canadians using it). Then they are leaving out Mexico and Central America which are also parts of the North American continent geographically, and Mexico even so politically to a degree via NAFTA. But Mexicans for their part often call Americans Norte Americano, if not calling us something less friendly. :slight_smile: