# Is the use of "motherland" or "fatherland" creepy to you? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 12, 2006, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069 "2006-03-12T19:47:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/41 "2006-03-15T00:11:41Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > And Horace said “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s, you know, country…thing.” That’s the reason that \*fatherland \* and \*motherland \* don’t really bother me. I just think of them as the English equivalents of the \*dulce et decorum \* usage (or the French _allons enfants de la patrie_). Rather naively perhaps I assumed that \*homeland \* was a version that the US dreamt up as a more modern, supposedly non-sexist version. ---
**Author:** ![sunacres](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@sunacres](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunacres)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/42 "2006-03-15T04:15:06Z")
> [@Ice Wolf](#): > > I doubt there was anything else they could have used other than “homeland” for Homeland Security. Besides what we always called it before 9/11: domestic security. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/43 "2006-03-15T12:54:13Z")
Another vote for all three being creepy. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/44 "2006-03-15T13:00:02Z")
Department of Homeland Security has always overloaded my creep-o-meter. It sounds like it should be headed by the Reichmaster. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/45 "2006-03-15T13:35:56Z")
> [@Ea\_calendula](#): > > But in my native language, Danish, no - not at all. Fatherland sounds perfectly normal. Curious - in Norwegian, the word is _fedrelandet,_ which is literally not Fatherland but Fathers-Land. Which makes it more of “the land of {my|our} fathers” than “this land that is the father of all” - that, and the fact that no one says _“for konge og fedreland”_ (“for king and fathers-land”) with a straight face, at least while sober, softens the term considerably. What’s the exact word in Danish? When I was a teen in the Reagan era, I lived in a suburban development called Homeland and heard lots of jokes about whether any of the missing Nazi war criminals ever turned up. So weird feelings about the term Homeland definitely predate the DHS… ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/46 "2006-03-15T18:39:58Z")
Did Nazi Germany ever use the German equivalent of “homeland”? I thought they used the term “fatherland” (_Vaterland_)? ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/47 "2006-03-15T20:08:31Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Did Nazi Germany ever use the German equivalent of “homeland”? I thought they used the term “fatherland” (_Vaterland_)? Of course it depends on your translation, but basically yes, all the time. Two dictionaries give _Heimat_ and _Heimatland_, but no further alternatives (I’ll ignore the note that the South African _Homeland_ is usually left untranslated.) _Heimatland_ seems more literal at first, but actually it’s closer to “country of origin”. It’s a completely generic word and not specific to Germany. See for example this [Travel Brochure](http://usmbooks.com/bavaria_travel.html) that invites us to visit the Führer’s _Heimatland_. _Heimat_ was an important keyword in NS Propaganda. See for example this poster: [Front and Homeland - The Guarantors of Victory](http://www.vulture-bookz.de/imagebank/Propaganda/pages/1942x~Front_und_Heimat_NS.html). Although the term was used a lot for emotional appeal, it was also used in fairly neutral ways where you would probably choose “home” in English (for the general area, not your house.) ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/48 "2006-03-15T20:15:05Z")
> [@kellner](#): > > See for example this [Travel Brochure](http://usmbooks.com/bavaria_travel.html) that invites us to visit the Führer’s _Heimatland_. Arrgh. I found several examples and promptly mixed them up. This one uses _Heimat_ as well. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/49 "2006-03-15T20:36:43Z")
Another vote for all three being creepy. First hearing about “Homeland Security” send shivers down my spine, and for good reason, since we now have an administration more bent on gathering power and secrecy to itself than any in a good long while. In a lot of ways, I think “homeland” is the creepiest of all–since the others in some places have historical antecendents, although they have since been sullied by Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R. But … “homeland” … eesh. Goering [knew what he was talking about](http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm). Now, indigenous peoples of North American speaking of ancestral homelands is very different. Bush and his regime using that rhetoric, however … _shudder._ It plays right into the kind of manipulation Goering understood all too well. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069/50 "2006-03-15T20:51:24Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Did Nazi Germany ever use the German equivalent of “homeland”? I thought they used the term “fatherland” (_Vaterland_)? From what I read of Nazi-era texts Germany usually was referred to as “Deutschland” (Germany) or “das Reich” (the Reich) - the latter more in a political/legal context, the former more in a cultural context. In a sentimental context “die Heimat” (the homeland) was also often used (this term does not necessarily refer to a country or other political entity but rather to that geographical region that the person in question feels the most attachment to, in the context - someone who does not get around much would consider his village or even his street as his _Heimat_ while an astronaut on Mars would refer to the Earth as his _Heimat_). “Vaterland” was also used (more in a speechifying/lofty context), but not as often as the terms referred to above because the term requires context (it’s a generic term, _someone_’s fatherland, so when conversing with Austrians, Alsatians etc. it would have been ambiguous - did the speaker mean Germany? Austria? France?). Also my impression is that “Vaterland” was already a bit dated at the time, with a bit of 19th century flavour. My impression FWIW is that the use of the “Fatherland” term and its specific connection with Nazism is much overestimated in the English-speaking world - possibly the usage of the term was much stressed because of its exoticism? Generally speaking, the term _Vaterland_ (fatherland) - is/was generic (the country that a person or group, specified or implied, has their primary allegiance to - to quite a few people in Nazi Germany that would not necessarily be the _Großdeutsches Reich_ but their particular part of it) - is the same thing as the _patria_ that patriotism refers to - was (and is) not an unambiguous way to say “Germany” - when referring to a Bolivian, “his fatherland” would mean “Bolivia”. The German national anthem refers to “the German fatherland” - the first part is _not_ redundant here. At the time of its writing in 1841 it contrasted the German fatherland to the much more usual (at the time) notions of people’s Hanoverian, Anhaltine, Hessian, Württembergish etc. fatherland. - predated the Third Reich by centuries and is now not particularly associated with Nazism in Germany (I personally associate it more with the pomposity of the 1871-1918 Wilhelmine empire) - nowadays is rarely used (except ironically), much more because of an association of archaic pomposity than of an association with Nazi Germany. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-use-of-motherland-or-fatherland-creepy-to-you/348069.md?page=2)