What's the origin of using 'motherland' vs. 'fatherland'?

Question

I mean it's cultural origin since I notice many countries prefer ''motherland' to 'fatherland', and the increase of using the pronouns 'it/it' instead of 'she/her' if a text is describing a country as a motherland. Any information or ideas?, thanks.

Answer 1

In my country we do say 'fatherland': 'vaderland'. I don't know what the reasons are for this difference between countries or cultures. I also don't know whether it's just Germanic languages that use the equivalent of 'motherland' and 'fatherland', or other languages too.

About the increase of 'it' for countries instead of 'she', I think English is starting to use natural gender for countries now instead of a grammatical gender. Countries are not of a sex, except in grammar, but in real life they are inanimate 'objects' that are genderless, like a house or a knee. The view of people toward this has changed, I don't know why, but you are right that more people use 'it' for a country nowadays.

Answer 2

Fatherland is the country where you grew up and in most cases also were born.
Motherland is the country whose culture your country inherited.

In WWII, Motherland was a brainwashing word used by the Germans to call themselves in neighbor occupied countries, specially in the Netherlands (Moederland)

Answer 3

The Indian Independence pass drew thought from the different goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, to the factor that many Indians refer to their usa as "Bharat Mata". India's national song is derived from the poem Vande Mataram by skill of Bankim Chandra Chatterji, which skill devotion to "mom India" as a factor of patriotic accountability. Hindi, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Marathi and Sanskrit have the term m?trubh?mi (Devanagari: ????????), actually "mom-Earth". that's from Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt. The artical discusses fatherland, Motherland and place of beginning place.