Why are holland called dutch

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Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. But what about the demonyms that are seemingly random? Before we dig into this demonym, there are three terms we need to define: Holland , the Netherlands , and Dutch. Over time, English-speaking people used the word Dutch to describe people from both the Netherlands and Germany, and now just the Netherlands today. At that point in time, in the early s, the Netherlands and parts of Germany, along with Belgium and Luxembourg, were all part of the Holy Roman Empire.

Specifically the phrase High Dutch referred to people from the mountainous area of what is now southern Germany. Low Dutch referred to people from the flatlands in what is now the Netherlands. Within the Holy Roman Empire, the word Netherlands was used to describe people from the low-lying nether region land. The term was so widely used that when they became a formal, separate country in , they became the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Over time, Holland , among English speakers, came to apply to the entire country, though it only refers to two provinces—the coastal North and South Holland—in the Netherlands today.

Got all that? In some cases, the demonym preceded the place name. For example, Finland is the place where the Finns live, just as Germany is the place where the Germans live.