Americans from America English from England. Dutch from Holland WHY??

Question

Why are people from Holland called Dutch and not Hollanders.

Answer 1

terri, you need to learn to understand, he has written this question almost perfectly, just missed out a comma, but big deal!. The English probably "borrowed" the word Holland from one language, and Dutch from another, I'd like to know if I'm wrong though, good question, by the way.

Answer 2

There are a lot of questions about this, so I guess it must be very important :)
There are also a couple of really good answers - I've collected some for you:

They use two names for the country, Holland and the Netherlands. Actually, originally 'Holland' was used as a name for only a region of the Netherlands. So that must be historical...
It is like saying England for Great Britain, the United Kingdom, except that the Dutch don't get cross.

You also say United States when you talk about America, and the Americans speak English.

Oh, a big part of the country lays so low it is below sea level. Low='neder' thus Netherlands as 'the low lands' - also use 'hollow'th explain how low the land is: 'Holland'.
This also explains all the canals and the boating, and I suppose that explains the trade history.

Still interested? Have a look http://www.bestlinkstoholland.com/

Answer 3

Because Holland is not a country but a state! The country is called Netherlands. The term Dutch to describe the people is a spin-off from Deutschland (the original country name of Germany), German people are Deutsch and since the language and race have got a long history together, the people living in Holland called themselves Dutch.

Answer 4

Well: dutch is a much older word then Holland.

Holland, as a nation, has it origins in the 1500-s. Before it had always been a collection of different independent tribes / little monarchies and later on a part of bigger European empires.
Only in the late 1500-s Holland separated from Spain (which at that time reigned over great parts of Europe) and started to develop itself as an independant country. This new country needed a new name. Officialy they used The Netherlands (i.e. The Low Countries, as great parts of Holland lay below sea level).
But often, the name of the most important province 'Holland' was used to refer to the country. Holland comes from HOUT-land and means WOOD Land (for there were a lot of timber activities).

Dutch is used to describe the language and works as an adjective for everything that comes from Holland.
Originally it only referred to the language. Dutch comes from
thiu-diska, a word over 1000 years old, meaning 'from the people'.
At that time: latin (or old french) were the languages used to communicate among higher classes. The language used by the common people was some sort of pre-dutch and was called thiu-diksa (the language "from the people").

Dutch (which is related to Deutsch - Deutschland) was thus the name for the language spoken in the region, later on for everything coming from that region.
Holland was a name that refered to the most important province in The Netherlands, often used to refer to the whole country.

Answer 5

It's not quite that simple, but basically stems from Americans ignorance of world geography.
There is no such country as Holland....Holland is a region of the country of the Netherlands, but a lot of people who immigrated from the the Netherlands came from that region, and refered to themselves as Hollanders or Dutch, thus the confusion.
Whoever determines these things in America, gave up trying to educate people on the difference, and now simply refer to the country as Holland....as has the Netherlands, who now refer to themselves as Holland when dealing with Americans.
For some reason, the schools have stopped teaching geography. When my children were young, I made it a point to teach it to them myself. So they are not one of the ones that think London is a country, and don't know that Paris is in France!
As for the language (or designation)....Dutch and Deutsch (German), you'd have to go way back in history for that one. Dutch and Deutsch are very similar. But not the same.
Anyhow, that is why people from the Netherlands (Holland) are called Dutch and not Hollanders.

Answer 6

Dutch people live in Holland, the Netherlands, the Low Country.
Americans live in the United States of America, "the land of the free and the brave" - it's all semantics

Answer 7

that bothers me too!! but i think itt might be beacause there might have been a dutchland or sumthing or maybe a religeon or like the puritans that moved to the country of holland and took over the people so now there all dutch

Answer 8

It stems from the word deutschland, Germany which used to occupy Holland centuries ago.

Answer 9

The Netherlands (Dutch: Nederland; IPA pronunciation: /"ne:dərlɑnt/) is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Dutch: Koninkrijk der Nederlanden), which is formed by the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy, located in northwestern Europe. It borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east. The current borders were formed in 1839.
1.)
The Netherlands is often referred to by the name Holland. This is, however, misguided, since the provinces of North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country's twelve provinces. (For more on this and other naming issues see below under 'naming conventions'.)

2.)The Netherlands are known under various terms both in English and other languages. These are used to describe the different overlapping geographical, linguistic and political areas of the Netherlands. This is often a source of confusion for people from other parts of the world.

Contents [hide]
1 The Netherlands
2 Holland
3 Dutch
4 Low Countries
5 Other languages
6 Proposed Solutions



[edit]
The Netherlands
The Netherlands literally means "low country". It is the conventional short form used to describe the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Formally, this encompasses the European part of the Netherlands and its overseas dependencies, although usually it is used to describe the European part. The current Dutch dependencies are the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Historically Suriname and Indonesia were also part of Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Notably the Netherlands is amongst a small number of countries, who have a singular name for their country, while the English uses a plural form. This plural convention is actually an archaic term, referring to the period 1581 to 1795 when the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was a loose federation comprised of seven provinces.

[edit]
Holland
Holland is commonly used as a synonym for the Netherlands as a whole, while actually it just refers to the central-western part of the country. This part consists of two of the country's twelve provinces, namely North Holland and South Holland.

Historically Holland was the most powerful province of the Netherlands: the counts of Holland were also counts of Hainaut, Flanders and Zeeland between the 1200s and 1400s; during the period of the Dutch Republic the stadholder of the Holland was the most powerful politician in the Netherlands, who often also was stadholder in other provinces; the cities in Holland were important trading cities, for instance six cities in Holland made up the Dutch East India Company. Still the two provinces, making up Holland, are very strong: they house 37% of the Dutch population.

The name 'Holland' is used in the Netherlands as well, especially in relation to soccer, where "Holland!" is shouted out loud by Dutch soccer fans. Furthermore Dutch tour operators and tourist information centres use the term, because the name 'Holland' is better known worldwide.

The name Holland ultimately stems from "holt land" ("wooded land"). A popular, but incorrect, fake etymology holds that it is derived from "hol land" ("hollow land"), inspired by the low-lying geography of the region.

The confusion between a part and its whole, called pars pro toto in poetry, often happens in country names, see for instance the use of England for the United Kingdom and Russia for the Soviet Union.

[edit]
Dutch
Dutch is the term used to describe both the inhabitants of the Netherlands as well as its language. Dutch is not only spoken in the Netherlands, but also in Flanders, parts of northern France (around Dunkirk) Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.

The English word "Dutch" is a cognate to the Dutch word dietsch and the German word Deutsch. All these words have the same etymological origin. Both these terms derive from what in Common West Germanic was known as theodisca, which meant "(language) of the (common) people". During the early Middle Ages, it was the elite mostly used Latin and the common people used their local languages.

[edit]
Low Countries
The term the Low Countries is often used to refer to the Netherlands, while it actually refers to the historical region de Nederlanden: the countries on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers. Which very roughly corresponds to the countries the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Sometimes this region is called Whole-Netherlands.

This region was united three times, in the Seventeen Provinces as a personal union during the 16th century, in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1830 under King William I, and as the BeNeLux a customs union founded in 1944.

[edit]
Other languages
In most languages, the name for the country literally means 'low lands' or is a transliteration of 'Nederland' or 'Holland'.

The name "Holland", or derivations of it, is commonly used for the Netherlands in many languages. Sometimes it is even the official name of the country, e.g., Holland (הולנד) (Hebrew), Holland (荷兰) (Chinese), and Oranda (オランダ) (Japanese), Holandia (Polish).

Other countries use a literal translation of "the Netherlands". This ofen becomes indistinguishable from "the Low Countries", e.g., die Niederlande (German), les Pays-Bas (French) Los Países Bajos (Spanish) I Paesi Bassi (Italian) Os Países Baixos (Portuguese), Yr Iseldiroedd (Welsh)

[edit]
Proposed Solutions
Some solutions among some English-speakers have been proposed to solve the confusion surrounding the country's name. One could refer to residents of the Netherlands as "Netherlanders" to call the language "Netherlandish", use the adjective "Netherlands" or "Netherlandic". Although these last terms are not very pleasing to the ear, they are the most accurate of the proposed terms, and are more similar to how residents refer to themselves ("Nederlanders").[citation needed].

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_%28terminology%29"

Answer 10

Holland = Netherlands = Deustchland all the same


Dutch is just a shortened and glorified version of "Deustchland"