Five Brothers and a War

Holland—The Name

The official name of Holland is Nederland, which literally means “below land” or “lowerland”. The people of Nederland are Nederlanders and the language is Nederlands. However, in common parlance, the country is called Holland , and this is what this book will use. The term “the Netherlands” is the anglicized form of Nederland . The term “Dutch” is another anglicized word, from a word that originally referred to the people of Holland and Germany. Of course, the real name of Germany is Deutschland , stemming from the word diutsch . At that time, the Dutch word was dietsc . In English, there was a differentiation between those people living in the higher altitudes were “high Dutch” and those in the lower altitudes, encompassing the low area of Germany, Belgium and Holland, were “Low Dutch”. As Germany formed into Deutschland in 1871, the numerous fiefdoms of Germany coalesced into a single nation. It is an interesting fact of history that this unification was formalized in the Palace of Versailles, the same building that caused Germany so much harm 47 years later with the Treaty of Versailles. Another aside is the origins of the name “Pennsylvania Dutch”, considering that this group had nothing to do with Holland. In their language, they are Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch. Note that the term “ Deitsch ” is a direct derivative of the old terms dietsc and diutsch . And remember that the Pennsylvania Dutch trace their origins to the late 1600s, from what is now southwestern Germany—about 200 years before Germany existed as a nation.

holland

Five Brothers and a War

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