Skip to main content

Holland or Netherlands or Dutch

By
(Map)

Both. Kinda. The country is known as the Netherlands (Nederland in Dutch). Holland is the name of the name of two of the twelve provinces that make up the Netherlands. North Holland (Noord Holland) is the home to Amsterdam while South Holland (Zuid Holland) is home to The Hague (Den Haag). The Hague is the "political" capital of the Netherlands while Amsterdam is the "real" capital. You have probably heard on the news about The Hague. It is in a way the political capital wester Europe. The European Union Courts are located there. I guess in a way the next powerful political establishment outside the UN. So the Dutch are Nederlanders but translated into english it is just Dutch.

The reason that Holland is used interchangeably as the name of the country is that that is the most influential province of the country. We really don't have an example here in America. It would be like if the United States would be called Texas or something. I'm sure Texans would love to do that but we really don't have one completely dominate state.

Thanks to Yahoo answers I found out that the term Dutch comes from Diets an old word meaning "The People" and the English called the people there Dutch since there used to be a Duchy of Holland and that would get confusing having two areas known as Holland.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 21, 2010 at 12:37 PM

    Very informative. Kinda confused by what you mean in the last paragraph. And I thought of and example for "Holland". People call Amercians Yankee's but you have to be from New York to truly be a Yankee. Or at lest New England.

    Purple Panther

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ray - Forest Boy

By
Remember around a month ago when the news story hit about Ray the Forest Boy who randomly showed up one day in Berlin, Germany? Well I forgot to post this but it has been found out who Ray the 'Forest Boy' actually is. 20 yr old Robin van Helsum of Hengelo Netherlands (100 miles east of Amsterdam). What allowed the police to finally determine who 'Ray' was? His stepmother. She recognized his picture on the news. He went missing 9 months ago. Now that he has been exposed as a hoax and not the Forest Boy who had been living in the woods for 5 years; Robin may face stiff fines and penalties for the extra police time and work put into his case which could cost as much as $40,000. 'Ray' originally walked into Berlin claiming he had been walking for 5 days after spending 5 years living out of a tent in the 'wild' where he had buried his father. One Berlin police officer said that there were things right from the start that did not match to his story. Lik...
2 comments
Read more

de Vries, Hans de Vries. Almost.

By
In 1967 THE James Bond (Sean Connery) decided to step away from the world of James Bond films. EOS studios thus had to find a replacement. It came down to 5 men. 2 Brits, an American, a Australian, and a Dutchman. John Richardson, Anthony Rogers, Robert Campbell, George Lazenby, and Hans de Vries. None of those names ring a bell? George Lazenby won the part for the 6th Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. A movie that has been lauded both as the worst and one of the best Bond films in the franchise. If you haven't seen it, you should. It was the Bond film that 'Breaks the Fourth Wall', Bond gets married, wears a kilt, and goes skiing. But the reason for this post is instead of this; (Yes, THAT is James Bond) We could of had this. Improvement? Probably not. He looks a wee bit angry. Plus, no one watches OHMSS anyway. So, did de Vries have a movie career after Bond? Ha, no. The only notable movie rolls I can find for him were pre bond. And that was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

2012 Olympic Update - 2 Medals + Links

By
The Olympics began with a bang (or was it Bond) last Friday night. The Dutch entered the stadium wearing their traditional Orange. Gota love those pants. Their uniforms actually won best dressed on this yahoo blog . It also seems the Dutch Women's Field Hockey team has gained worldwide attention before even taking the field to defend their Beijing Gold. Both for their play on the field and their uniforms. An article about it here  Yahoo . And a photo gallery here . Wow. The medals began coming in on Sunday for the Dutch when the Women's 4x100 Free Style Swimming Relay team secured a silver medal. Falling just behind Australia and beating team USA for second place. Followed soon after by Marianne Vos finally winning her elusive Olympic Gold Medal in Olympic Road Race Cycling. Here's a picture of her crossing the finish line (that is one excited and exhausted looking person) and one of her accepting her medal.  As of Tuesday, the Dutch are in 16 place for to...
Post a Comment
Read more