Let me give it a try...
Just as wrong as calling all of the UK just England, or as wrong as
it was to call the Soviet Union just plain Russia, it is wrong to
call the Netherlands Holland. We've established that already, I
think. Now, the Netherlands is an old designation, meaning just that
(a.k.a. the Low Countries), consisting in the past of up to all of
the present countries of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and a
part of northern France. Then the northern Netherlands became
independent (from Spain), thus dividing the Netherlands in the
Republic of the United Netherlands (the north), and the Spanish or
southern Netherlands (later to become the Austrian Netherlands,
following the Spanish Succession War). At that stage, the southern
Netherlands already excluded a big part of modern Belgium (mainly the
principality-bishopric of Liege) and most of the northern part of
France previously within the Netherlands.
In 1815, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was formed. This consisted of
present Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. After Belgium
became independent, and the personal union of the Netherlands and
Luxembourg was dissolved, the Netherlands retained the name, which is
to this day officially "Koninkrijk der Nederlanden" (Kingdom of the
Netherlands, i.e. plural). The short way to call their country
is "Nederland" to the Dutch (just as no citizen of the UK would call
his country "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland", except when being _very_ formal). To be consistent, English
speakers should introduce the form "Netherland". I don't advocate
this, by the way. I'm perfectly happy with "the Netherlands". But
Holland is something else.
In the time of the Republic of the United Netherlands, the most
important province (there were seven provinces, and some territories
one would call now "federal") was Holland. For example, it paid 80%
of all taxes. Nearly all international trade was done from Holland.
This is why abroad the country was referred to as Holland. The
republic was really a very loose confederation of seven almost
independent states.
The old province of Holland is now divided into two provinces
(although the "external Holland borders" are not the same as in those
days, but that is another story).
The word "Dutch" is, of course, etymologically the same as "Deutsch".
Indeed, the Dutch language (Nederlands) was known as Low-German
(Nederduits) until as late as the 18th century. The Dutch language
(also called Netherlandic in some scientific publications) bears a
big resemblance to the Low-German dialects that are spoken in the
north of Germany. The denl boundary is therefore only a language
border as far as the official languages are concerned. The dialects
on both sides of the border are very much similar, and change only
gradually when travelling from west to east.
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "m donner" <maxivan82@h...> wrote:
> harry & anton &al
> perhaps the most interesting fact about the name holland nearly
escaped us
> which is that it is a trickster
> for clearly it does not mean nederland as a dutch word but it does
mean the
> netherlands in english
>
> & clearly also the dutch should be the final authority
> even tho english is nominally our lingua franca
>
> so i think nederland should stand on that list
> & we should probably also change ireland to eire
> though not oz to australia
> again in the name of brevity as well as wit
> etc
> m
>
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