No, I don’t think so.
Augustus wanted the title pater patriae, or “father of the fatherland.”
Yeah, those Romans were perfectly content to stay in their own little piece of the world. 
The old double standard. It’s all fine for your fatherland to go running around, annexing every loose territory on three continents. But if your motherland tries to occupy just three or four neighbouring countries, all the other countries act like it’s some kind of slut.
Yes, and homeland gives me the creeps as well.
In English and German, yes, ‘fatherland’ and ‘Vaterland’ do have WWII connotations.
But in my native language, Danish, no - not at all. Fatherland sounds perfectly normal.
I guess I’ve seen to many with neo-nazi bad guys, since it only registers in English and German.
One more creeped out by Homeland, mother and fatherland too. I think any overly patriotic names or speeches creep me out.
Me, if I see “heartland” one more time…apparently some tornadoes ripped through the Heartland again this weekend.
Can’t they just go through rural _________(insert state here)?
Argh.
I don’t mind homeland–I don’t like what Bush has done to it. Motherland/fatherland…mother not so bad, father is completely tied in my mind to Nazis.
Or at least associate some of the other regions of the country with organs and systems.
“Today we’ll be talking with a used car salesman from the spleenland of America,” or “The kind of old-fashioned liverland values one expects in the Southwest.”
Yeah, that would be cool.
Sailboat
I hate “homeland.” Why not “domestic security”? Why not “national”? Jesus, even “border” or “turf” or “myspace” or “crib”? Anything!
Does that make Hawaii the appendix of America?
Fatherland: creepy
Motherland: semi-creepy
Homeland: not creepy
… did he say “Patria” or “Madre Patria”, in the original?
In Spain it became somewhat identified with Franco’s dictatorship, but that has washed away after a while. After all, our separatists are always talking about the Motherland - they just mean a different chunk of land. The motto of the Guardia Civil (similar to US Marshals in many respects) is “Todo por la Patria”, “I’ll give everything for the Motherland”; they’re very much our most respected police force.
It was kind of shocking but at the same time a nice surprise when I first ran into Latin Americans who greeted me as being “from the Madre Patria”. Those were Cubans, but I’ve received the same greeting from several other nationalities. In these context, the Mother Country is Spain as the one that brought our language etc etc to our former colonies; the same people usually refer to their own countries as “la Patria”, without the mother bit.
To me it’s a pretty neutral term, its meaning depends wholly on the context. When I see some imbecile with a balaklava over his face and a gun in his hand saying that he’s going to use said gun to kill “outsiders” who “dare infect our Motherland with their presence” (the ones who do that in my homeland tend to be the children of inmigrants) it’s negative. When it gets me a hug from someone I’ve just met, it’s positive 
Another vote for creepy as hell. Which is probably why the Bush Administration loves to tout “Homeland” every chance it gets…
Yep, creeped out here, too, by Fatherland, Motherland, Homeland in terms of US use.
I suppose Homeland was chosen for this latest whup up of national fervor to avoid the Bad Hitlery connotations the scant decades back.
IMHO, Homeland Security sure ain’t doing enough to honor people whose homes have been here a great while; witness Jack Abramoff and that thicket of deceit with Native Americans.
Like Loach, I get the Nazi and Soviet vibe from “fatherland” and “motherland”, although of course, context counts.
But “homeland”? The warm fuzzies.
I doubt there was anything else they could have used other than “homeland” for Homeland Security. But it does seem to me, right from the start, to have “fatherland”/“motherland” connotations. And those, historically, don’t end up well.
How about U.S. Security? I, too, am weirded out by the term “Homeland” for many of the reasons stated above.
I’m not creeped out by any of the terms, but Motherland, Fatherland, and Homeland all seem the same to me.
And Horace said “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s, you know, country…thing.”
Add me to the list of those who find homeland creepy. “Domestic security” would’ve worked just fine.
Well, National Security was just too old fashioned and could include protecting anyone who happened to be in our country. If you call it Homeland security then you can get away with persecuting those that did not grow up in the US. Homeland excludes from our mental picture the huge numbers of immigrants throughout history.
Immigrants referring to countries they came from as their motherland I have no problem with. Native Americans refering to a Homeland I have no problem with. But other than that, Mother, Father, Homeland all creep me out for the US.