page_title: Terminology of the Low Countries
section_title: Holland (pars pro toto)
hierarchical_section_title: Terminology of the Low Countries / Names from local polities / Holland (pars pro toto)
caption_attribution_description: English: Dutch soccer fan's jerseys for sale at Amsterdam Airport summer 2008. Notably reading HOLLAND.
context_page_description: The Low Countries comprise the coastal Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta region in Western Europe, whose definition usually includes the modern countries of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Both Belgium and the Netherlands derived their names from earlier names for the region, due to nether meaning "low" and Belgica being the Latinized name for all the Low Countries, a nomenclature that went obsolete after Belgium's secession in 1830.
  The Low Countries—and the Netherlands and Belgium—had in their history exceptionally many and widely varying names, resulting in equally varying names in different languages. There is diversity even within languages: the use of one word for the country and another for the adjective form is common. This holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form for the country "the Netherlands". Moreover, many languages have the same word for both the country of the Netherlands and the region of the Low Countries, e.g., French and Spanish.
context_section_description: In many languages including English, (a calque of) "Holland" is a common name for the Netherlands as a whole. Even the Dutch use this sometimes. Strictly speaking, Holland is only the central-western region of the country comprising two of the twelve provinces, North Holland and South Holland, and thus linguistically a pars pro toto similar to use of Russia for the (former) Soviet Union, and England for the United Kingdom.
  The use is sometimes discouraged. For example, the "Holland" entry in the style guide of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers states: "Do not use when you mean the Netherlands (of which it is a region), with the exception of the Dutch football team, which is conventionally known as Holland".
  From the 17th century onwards, the County of Holland was the most powerful region in the current Netherlands. The counts of Holland were also counts of Hainaut, Friesland and Zeeland from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Holland remained most powerful during the period of the Dutch Republic, dominating foreign trade, and hence most of the Dutch traders encountered by foreigners were from Holland, which explains why the Netherlands is often called Holland overseas.
  After the demise of the Dutch Republic under Napoleon, that country became known as the Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810), and the former countship of Holland was split up and became two of its eleven provinces, later known as North Holland and South Holland, because one Holland province by itself was considered too dominant in area, population and wealth compared to the other provinces. Today the two provinces making up Holland, including the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, remain politically, economically and demographically dominant – 37% of the Dutch population live there. In most other Dutch provinces and also Flanders, the word Hollander is sometimes used in a pejorative sense to refer to the perceived superiority or supposed arrogance of people from the Randstad – the main conurbation of Holland proper and of the Netherlands.
  In 2009, members of the First Chamber drew attention to the fact that in Dutch passports, for some EU-languages a translation meaning "Kingdom of Holland" was used, as opposed to "Kingdom of the Netherlands". As replacements for the Estonian Hollandi Kuningriik, Hungarian Holland Királyság, Romanian Regatul Olandei and Slovak Holandské kráľovstvo, the parliamentarians proposed Madalmaade Kuningriik, Németalföldi Királyság, Regatul Țărilor de Jos and Nizozemské Kráľovstvo, respectively. Their reasoning was that "if in addition to Holland a recognisable translation of the Netherlands does exist in a foreign language, it should be regarded as the best translation" and that "the Kingdom of the Netherlands has a right to use the translation it thinks best, certainly on official documents". Although the government initially refused to change the text except for the Estonian, recent Dutch passports feature the translation proposed by the First Chamber members. Calques derived from Holland to refer to the Dutch language in other languages:
  Arabic: هولندي (hūlandī)
  Bengali: ওলন্দাজ (olondaj)
  Bulgarian: холандски (holandski)
  Catalan/Valencian: holandès
  Chinese: 荷蘭語/荷兰语 (hélányŭ)
  Czech: holandština
  Danish: hollandsk
  Estonian: hollandi keel
  Finnish: hollanti
  French: hollandais
  Galician: holandés
  Georgian: ჰოლანდიური (holandiuri)
  German: Holländisch
  Greek: Ολλανδικά (Ollandika)
  Gujarati: હોલેન્ડ (Holand)
  Hebrew: הולנדית (Holandit)
  Hindi: होलेन्ड (Holand)
  Hungarian: holland
  Icelandic: hollenska
  Interlingua: hollandese
  Irish: Ollainnis
  Italian: olandese
  Japanese: オランダ語 (Orandago)
  Latin: Hollandica
  Latvian: holandiešu valoda
  Lithuanian: Olandų kalba
  Macedonian: холандски (hólandski)
  Malay (including Malaysian and Indonesian): Belanda
  Maltese: Olandiż
  Persian: holandi
  Polish: holenderski
  Portuguese: holandês
  Romanian: olandeză
  Russian: Голландский (Gollandskij)
  Serbian: холандски (holandski)
  Sinhala: ඕලන්දය (Olandaya)
  Slovak: holandčina
  Spanish: holandés
  Swedish: holländska
  Tagalog: Olandés
  Turkish: hollandaca
  Ukrainian: голандсь
caption: In football (soccer), the Dutch national team is commonly referred to as "Holland"; here supporter shirts for sale at Amsterdam Airport
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