Talk:Holland

message: In the sport of cricket, the Dutch team refers to itself as "Holland". Here is a picture of a Dutch player at the 2005 ICC Trophy competition, showing clearly the team name on his shirt.  I suppose this is similar to the fact that Welsh cricketers play for England. (Also mentioned on Talk:Netherlands.)
:Note that Nederland has a full three syllables.--MWAK 15:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dutch football audiences show shawls with the text Holland on it, but when the country names are shown on television Netherlands is the name, which is official and correct.--84.26.109.69 12:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's "Holland" in cricket 

message: I'm removing this as it should be in the Netherlands article not the Holland article. Arthur Holland 08:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. It actually is a copy of a paragraph in the Netherlands article, and that is the proper location. -- Eugene van der Pijll 09:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colonies of Holland 

message: Whether Holland is the same as The Netherlands depends on who you ask. It's based on cultural and lingual differences. I'm Dutch and I live in the provice Overijssel. I've done some research about this and many old documents and maps from centuries ago are showing "Holland" as the entire country. I have also done some research on "Holland" being an official region of some sort, but I cannot find any. Official government resources don't mention Holland as a region anywhere. Therefor I'm questioning if Holland as a region is a fact, or an opinion. We have to either provide facts and sources to prove that Holland is officially recognized as a region within The Netherlands, or change the article to make it clear that some people consider Holland a region, while others don't. We have to be careful with some hardcore believers who are discrediting the neutrality of this article by adding or reverting edits without providing facts and sources. - Thomas  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThomasLobker (talk • contribs) 16:20, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It's certainly based on cultural and linguistic differences. It might well be that some old maps showed the country as "Holland", but I highly doubt these are Dutch maps, unless from the (very short) period of the Kingdom of Holland. Holland is presently not an official region as there are no official regions today. As such. But it's obviously a region in a wider sense. If you inspect the sources, you'll see an entire book was written about it in three volumes :o). This covers the historical county and the modern situation, as does this article. I think you're right that it is today uncommon to mean the modern region while speaking about "Holland". But it's also quite uncommon to refer to the country in this way in any formal context. Government documents, laws, school books, news bulletins etc. always use Nederland. I dare say the general trend is declining. In the past many organisations and companies had Holland as part of their name, but this is rare nowadays. Recently, there has been a revival, people using Hollands as an equivalent of "native Dutch" to set themselves apart from immigrants.--MWAK (talk) 17:28, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Sigh. This is a perennial discussion. The same issue goes for England = United Kingdom. And note that outside the actual Holland region the self-reference to Holland is rare (try to tell someone from Maastricht he is Hollands and you stand a good chance of being beaten up). Arnoutf (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not the same for England and United Kingdom. England is actually a country, recognized by surrounding countries and the majority of the world. England and other countries within the United Kingdom do have their own parliament and government autonomy. This is not the case for "Holland" in the sense of a region. I highly doubt that any sane person from Maastricht would beat you up when you tell him he's a Hollander. And even if it's true, then it's because of linguistic differences like I said before. If people are using it as a swear word, then it will be taken as an insult. This would confirm that the meaning of the word Holland is highly subjective. It is very common for Dutch people to introduce themselves saying "I'm from Holland" while meaning "I'm from The Netherlands". So when Holland is not officially recognized as a region, and the vast majority of the world and The Netherlands is using Holland as a name for the whole country, then how can we justify calling it a region? This is subjective.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThomasLobker (talk • contribs) 16:54, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok if you want to make that point and object against being subjective I would fully support you. However so far you have inserted your point of view as truth without any mainstream support - so if anything here seems subjective, it is your opinion. Please provide evidence of objective mainstream reliable secondary sources that unambiguously support your point. Thanks in advance  Arnoutf (talk) 17:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: "However so far you have inserted your point of view as truth without any mainstream support" If that is true then I apologize, but this was never my intent. Removing "not entirely uncommon" is in my opinion making the statement more neutral. "Not entirely uncommon" means that it's not very common, but this is not backed up by any numbers. In my opinion this is just false, because it is actually very common. Why would we want one opinion to be rare and the other one to be widely accepted? On top of this the alinea starts with a hard fact "Holland is a region [...] the Netherlands." that is not backed up by any evidence or official source. So one opinion is stated as a hard fact, the other one is denigrated as not entirely uncommon. This is not neutral and this should be improved. ThomasLobker (talk) 11:37, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you misunderstand the function of the first sentence. A Wikipedia article has a certain subject and in this case the subject is the concept "Holland" as pertaining to the area of roughly the traditional County of Holland. The first sentence has to indicate the subject in a definitional way, so, for the purpose of this article, "Holland" is defined as the region. It should not be read as taking sides in a conflict about rivalling conventions :o). That being said, I must agree that "not entirely uncommon" is ambiguous. Most anglophone readers might understand it as "quite often, really". They are good at understatement; perhaps as a Dutchman you took it too literally. Perhaps it's best replaced with the more logically correct "sometimes". But we should not remove any qualification of the use, for this would give the false impression that in the present Dutch language Holland has exactly the same meaning as The Netherlands. This is not so, for "Holland" is never used to indicate the country in a formal context. Next question: can the use of Holland as a denominator of the region be sourced? Well, it sure can. The "Dikke van Dale" (i.e. the most authoritative commercial Dutch dictionary) edition 1984 starts the lemma Holland in this way: het westelijk deel van Nederland, tijdens de Republiek één gewest, thans verdeeld in de provincies Noord- en Zuid-Holland; — bij uitbreiding ook voor geheel Nederland: het Koninkrijk Holland (1806-1810); thans in het buitenland nog vaak in deze zin gebezigd (...). It adds a subsentence about inhabitants of some provinces outside of Holland, referring to the area outside of their province as "Holland": I wonder whether such use has really been documented. I can't imagine a Brabander departing for Maastricht saying "I'm off to Holland" :o).--MWAK (talk) 22:35, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: England is today a country in the sense that British law recognises it as a constituent country. But it does not have its own government nor its own parliament: the institutions seated in London are the government and parliament of the United Kingdom! Nor is it an internationally recognised sovereign state. However, this article is not based on the claim that Holland is a country within The Netherlands; it merely presumes that there is a concept Holland that is, historically and otherwise, applicable to a certain geographical area ("region"). That can hardly be denied. As there are sources doing the same (e.g. those three volumes I referred to) we can reflect those sources. You make a distinction between "objective fact" and "subjective opinion" but Wikipedia is not about finding the facts. It's not science: it's an encyclopedia representing the range of published subjective opinions in a balanced and neutral way. Indeed many people outside and inside The Netherlands use the term Holland to refer to the country. The article does not deny this or condemn it: it merely points out that there is an older and more limited use. As information about the country is amply treated in Netherlands, the information about the gewest Holland has its logical place in this article.--MWAK (talk) 23:04, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: "but Wikipedia is not about finding the facts. It's not science: it's an encyclopedia representing the range of published subjective opinions in a balanced and neutral way" Yes I totally agree on this. That's exactly why it should be clear that there are multiple views. Presuming that it's not a fact/science that Holland is a region, then we have two subjective opinions where one is that it's a region and the other one is that it's a country. The article should point this out in a balanced and neutral way, like you say so yourself.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThomasLobker (talk • contribs) 11:17, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

text: As a Dutchman living in the province of Noord-Brabant I personally find it rather insulting (misrecognizing the fact that ten of the twelve provinces do not belong to the region properly called Holland) if someone uses Holland to refer to the Netherlands. I always use the Netherlands when I refer to my country in English, but most Dutch people are uncomfortable with using articles in front of country names. That's why Dutchmen use Holland for the Netherlands in English. The Dutch people not being used to use articles in front of country names also leads to pars pro toto mistakes in Dutch such as Engeland for het Verenigd Koninkrijk, which would insult Scots and Welshmen gravely. These mistakes happen constantly on a daily basis (with myself not taking part in this mistake, though I am sometimes tempted to use Groot-Brittannië (without article) instead). Using Holland for the Netherlands and England for the United Kingdom is just a sloppy use of language. It isn't wrong per se but it is certainly not stylish, tidy or correct. It is recommended to use language in a way which insults the least people; that's called etiquette. I don't feel hatred or contempt towards Holland (the two provinces I mean) (I don't speak the Brabantian dialect and even consider a large part of the Brabantian population to be too provincial), but using Holland for the Netherlands is a testimony of ignorance in the broadest sense of the word. A lot of elderly people in Brabant and Limburg would be seriously  distraught if you use Holland instead of Netherlands: to them Holland means exploitation and (religious) repression conducted by Protestants against Catholics (a majority in the southern part of the Netherlands). I wouldn't use England for the UK, knowing that I would offend Scottish and Welsh people. I even don't use Great Britain to refer to the UK, knowing that most British people (including English) say for example "In the UK..." It is rather sad that English language speakers and Dutchmen alike make these minor though potentially awkward mistakes. --84.26.109.69 12:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The simple fact is that many people do use "Holland" for "the Netherlands", whether you like it or not. (Ever heard the "Hup Holland Hup" at a soccer game of the national team?) Your personal feelings ("rather insulting"; "not stylish", "a testimony of ignorance") are totally irrelevant. Skarioffszky 19:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How is it ignorant to stand up for the truth? With people like you people would still think the earth is flat..
I talked to a guy from Holland. He call it Holland not Netherlands. My self I'm from Denmark, and nothing is called Netherlands or something related to that. The name of the country in Danish is Holland the same with Norwegian and Swedish. I have always thought that its only in English its called Netherlands. --Arigato1 19:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Sorry, that's not true. In the Netherlands we call our own country 'Nederland' and in English we use both 'Holland' and 'The Netherlands'. I'm quite sure, however, that in the region I live (Frisia) people use seldom 'Holland' in English, but choose 'The Netherlands' instead. This is because Frisian 'Hollanner' is an insult and means something like 'kakker' in Dutch (don't know the exact English word). 'Hollanner' means something like the opposite of insultive 'boer', 'farmer'. Holland is seen as the provinces Norht- and South-Holland and sometimes also including the province of Utrecht.-83.117.225.78 15:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Arigatol, I'm a Dutchman living in Denmark and can say you are totally wrong, when you write that "nothing is called Netherlands or something related to that" in Danish. There is in fact the Danish word "Nederlandene" that is even mentioned in the Danish wikipedia article. It's true that Danish media and publishers are extremely sloppy when it come to using "Nederlandene", but less so politicians and academics. In Norway it is a whole lot more prevalent to use the Norwegian term "Nederland" to refer to the country as opposed to what you just claimed. Norwegians are thus being a whole lot more sensitive and correct than the Danes. The same in Swedish, where they use the word "Nederländarna". Please get your facts straight, Arigatol! Fedor (talk) 20:16, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

text: Sorry, bur The Netherlands formed never a republic with Belgium and Luxemburg. The three countries were part of the possessions of the duke of Burgundy, but the bishpory of Liege (Limburg) was not a part of it. In those days there were 17 Netherlands and a number of free cities. On the formation of the republic of the Netherlands (7 provinces forming the United Netherlands), the southern Netherlands were not a part of it; they were kept under control of Spain (later Austria). Holland was by far the biggest, richest and most populous province of the United Netherlands. In principle every province had a stadholder (representive of the king, but the king did not exist!), but often several province shared the same stadholder (prince of Orange). Because the power of the province Holland, the stadholder of Holland in practice functioned as head of state for all the Netherlands. That is probably the beginning of the confusion. After Napoleon the kingdom of the Netherlands was formed, until 1830 including Belgium and in practice also Luxemburg. Until a few decades ago the inhabitants of the other provinces considered it as an insult, when was said that they were inhabitants of 'Holland'. However, due to internal migration and under influence of foreign people, also many persons from other proveinces are nowadays saying that they come from Holland. So, correctly speaking Netherlands is the correct translation of the kingdom of the Netherlands, but in practice the use of the word is accepted by most people (but not all!).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robvhoorn (talk • contribs) 09:58, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  & sorry again: From the Romans through te Spanisch occupation this region ('countries' didn't exist!) was called 'the low countries = Nederlanden. Only during the so called Golden Age, the name 'Holland' came in use. Wich btw in MY surroundings only is uses as an insult.
--86.92.83.98 (talk) 20:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

text: I believe — I'm unaware of any exact data — that the number of people in The Netherlands using Holland as the name of the country has actually declined since WWII. As I remember it, this was much more common in the first half of the 20th century. It is now far less common than the use of "English" for "British" in the UK. Another point is that it was never in this sense used in any even slightly formal context.--MWAK 10:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is no statistics, but I guess that you are partly right. In the two provinces North- and Sout-Holland the use of the word Holland for referring to the whole Netherlends has strongly declined, however, in the other parts of the country the use of the word Holland has increased considerably.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robvhoorn (talk • contribs) 08:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I understand what you're trying to say, but to my experience many Dutchmen do indeed mean the entire country of the (European) Netherlands when they say "Holland". I have yet to encounter an example a Dutchman refering to "Holland" in the narrow sense to describe where he/she comes from, myself and you excluded. I think we should hurry up and create a superprovince or state covering both provinces (plus Utrecht and Flevoland if need be), so we can clearly called that "Holland". Fedor (talk) 20:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  the Netherlands or Holland? 

message: I'm sorry to add this remark only now, four years after this discussion took place, but there is one thing that people seemingly fail to understand. Not the entire Netherlands is Holland and as such, the terms "The Netherlands" and "Holland" are not interchangable, but that does not change the fact that there is a region called Holland. Therefore, I am from Holland or I live in Holland isn't necessarily wrong. I myself, for example, am from Holland (to be precise from South-Holland and to be more precise from Katwijk). So a Dutchman talking about Holland isn't necessarily using the wrong term. In Dutch, I would rather say I am from the Randstad, but as that term doesn't really have a proper English translation, I often use "Holland" instead. For my current place of residence, I use "the Netherlands", not Holland (I live in Limburg nowadays). PPP (talk) 23:57, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand what you're trying to say, but to my experience many Dutchmen do indeed mean the entire country of the (European) Netherlands when they say "Holland". I have yet to encounter an example a Dutchman refering to "Holland" in the narrow sense to describe where he/she comes from, myself and you excluded. I think we should hurry up and create a superprovince or state covering both provinces (plus Utrecht and Flevoland if need be), so we can clearly called that "Holland". Fedor (talk) 20:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Holland and The Netherlands are not the same, therefore using Holland isn't necessarily wrong

message: If this article is about Holland, then why is the exact same map of The Netherlands (from the article on The Netherlands) showing all of the other pronvinces/regions, without any highlight/focus on North Holland and South Holland? I suggest someone find or create map similar to those that are entirely gray save for the area discussed. The map used in the Bretagne article could make a good model. CJ Withers 13:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map issues 

message: It says "More recent territorial changes are the transfer of Oudewater, Woerden and Vianen from South Holland to the province of Utrecht, in 1600, 1989 and 2002 respectively." This is unfortunately not true, I think. These villages, Woerden and Vianen I'm certain about, were Utrecht villages all along, so no transfer in recent history. Please give factual information.
::According to these websites and my memory the information you dispute is correct.    Bart van der Pligt 14:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untrue mentioning of transferred villages 

message: The article is stating that the region Holland is populated by 16,7 million inhabitants, while the population of The Netherlands is, at most, 16,6 million. I'm going to add up the population of the provinces North- and South-Holland to each other and take that as the population for the region.-83.117.225.78 15:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, someone again confused the two concepts :o). I'll remedy.--MWAK 07:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population 

message: Holland should redirect to the Netherlands. Everyone I know, including Dutchmen themselves, call The Netherlands Holland and infact I did not even know Holland was a region before seeing this on Wikipedia.
Holland should be a redirect with a notice put on the Netherlands page for a disambiguation. I guarantee 99.99% of people who search for 'Holland' on wikipedia are searching for the country and not the region!! --The High Commander (talk) 01:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if your concern is to guide people to The Netherlands, a redirect has little added value: they will reach their destination soon enough. However, I believe that people wanting to know about "Holland", will typically not be interested in the political entity "The Netherlands" but in some socio-cultural image: that place with all those windmills, tulips, cheese and wooden shoes. And that would be the region. Furthermore, being immediately redirected from "Holland" to "The Netherlands" might well cause the reader to assume the one is simply an alternative name of the other — but there is nothing "simple" about the real situation and thus such a redirect would be grossly deceptive. Or he might be surprised about the unfamiliar official name; in that case a search term "Holland" which directly leads him to, well, Holland, would best serve his need to be informed. Finally, I strongly believe most readers are in fact eager to be informed whether their vernacular use of a word is at odds with its "historically correct" meaning. Being historically correct is therefore not such a bad principle for an encyclopedia to be organised along. Or would you also argue that England should redirect to United Kingdom?--MWAK (talk) 06:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Or America to the United States? Someone has created a redirect from Holland to its disambig page, which may be relevant here. I am not happy about the renaming to "subnational area" though, anyone better suggestions? Arnoutf (talk) 21:56, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "region" might do. I redirected to the disambiguation page after user Matt Yeager renamed the original article Holland to Holland (subnational area) and redirected the lemma Holland to The Netherlands, which is clearly suboptimal. He did so without solving the practical problem of changing all the many thousands of links...If that problem is not solved very soon, the only option seems to be to return to the original situation.--MWAK (talk) 22:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say return to the original situation. In any case, undiscussed page moves on these Holland/Netherlands pages are not the best idea. There should be consensus before such a move as this one is made. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 22:41, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree that undoing the move is probably best. A second option, albeit suboptimal, would be a pointer to the disambiguation page; as MWAK made. Matt Yeagers idea bypassing the whole issue to go to the Netherlands, is in my view not an acceptable option. Arnoutf (talk) 23:08, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Alright, I apologize for apparently stirring up an issue that needed not be stirred up. I assumed that the page had kind of haphazardly assumed such a character and didn't really notice the very volatile status quo. My apologies. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 23:21, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Apologies accepted. I'll restore the original situation.--MWAK (talk) 07:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do not copy and paste content to move a page -- use the Move function, or if that is not possible, place a note at WP:RM. older ≠ wiser 11:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Calling Netherlands Holland is about the same as calling United States DakotaPatio (talk) 15:41, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holland should redirect to the Netherlands 

message: It seems to me that a lot of this article (and a lot of this discussion page) talks about the confusion between the Netherlands and Holland. So why isn't there a separate page dealing exclusively with that? A link at the top of this page could then replace all this... rather hostile criticism of outsiders' confusions and Hollanders' smug acceptance of their position as the figureheads of the Netherlands with actual information about Holland, which is surely what this page should provide?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.176.135.127 (talk) 12:53, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, that smugness is also part of the actual situation :o) — and most of the article is not about this issue. Also, to avoid confusion the confusion itself must be addressed, so a separate article could not replace that. Nevertheless, if sufficient sourced material could be found in principle such an article could be created...--MWAK (talk) 17:24, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Suggestion 

message: It'll save a bunch of headaches on vandalism reverts, pretty much irrespective of who wins. JohannVII (talk) 19:33, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temporary edit protect until after the World Cup game, and probably a week or two after? 

message: I dispute this line in the intro: "This usage is generally accepted but nevertheless unofficial." The reference says this: 
::"Though it is generally accepted that the Netherlands is referred to as Holland in many different languages, some Dutch people, especially those not from North or South Holland, do not like the habit. This website used to use ‘Holland’ instead of ‘the Netherlands’ to make page and menu titles shorter, but we received emails from Dutch visitors who objected."
This does not say that the use of "Holland" is generally accepted. It says only that it is generally accepted that Holland is used in many different languages. Of course, that point is true. I generally accept that too! It does not make it right. Nor does it include Dutch, which is the primary language at issue here. The current sentence does not reflect what the reference actually says. But beyond that the primary point is that there are some Dutch people who do not like the use of Holland in this sense, so of course it should not appear in the first line of this article.
My amendment was deleted by someone with the comment that it did not reflect the reference and shows POV. 
I admit it is grating to see, in the very first line of this article, that the use of Holland is "generally accepted". I do have that point of view. I also think it is poor style to include, in the opening line of an encyclopedia article, a contentious comment that is grating on some people. However, I'm willing to rely on the content of the reference, which says that is is not generally accepeted. 
Schildewaert (talk) 20:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Usage comment in intro

message: As in a while now, the site 'minbuza.nl' has been moved to the Dutch site 'rijksoverheid.nl' and the English site 'government.nl'. This leads to that reference 5 is no longer a reference with any depth. I suggest to use the site reference 1 for the same part of reference 5 since it covers the same information.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.213.0.223 (talk) 19:27, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent suggestion and now done.--MWAK (talk) 06:40, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved site 

message: I agree that "in principle anything in the lead section should be explained in the main text", and it does.
However, it does not mean, that every single thing in the main text should be mentioned in the lead section.
The idea in which a term for a part of something can sometimes refer to the whole of something can be understood by anyone without a "clever" Latin phrases. That is why I find "pars pro toto" unnecessary in the lead section. 85.193.202.107 (talk) 14:39, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, you have a point. Preferably the lead uses the simplest language possible. The informality of the term should be indicated though. I'll make the necessary changes, keeping close to your version.--MWAK (talk) 06:12, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Now, I totally agree with you, although I could not find an explicit rule about "the simplest language possible" in a lead section. Thanks. 85.193.202.107 (talk) 11:57, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it's good that there's no explicit rule as we should allow ourselves all necessary freedom, but it is indeed implicit to the main function of the lead: to provide a short abstract understandable to the casual reader.--MWAK (talk) 07:52, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unnecessary [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holland&action=historysubmit&diff=624634679&oldid=624612784 revert] 

message: Though still popular with (pseudo!)scientists from Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden and other important universities all over the world,
it is rather obvious as well as undeniable that the geographical name Holland is cognate to the geographical name Halland, a former Danish territory, nowadays part of Sweden.
This Halland is neighboring on the main Danish island Sjælland or Zealand, with the Danish capital Copenhagen, whereas the Netherlandish province of Holland (nowadays North and South) is bordering on the province of Zeeland: the occurrence of the pairs Halland/Zealand and Holland/Zeeland is just too much of a coincidence. Therefore the names Holland and Zeeland must have been given by Danish Vikings.Amand Keultjes (talk) 13:36, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: And then there's Parts of Holland that's also next to the sea. Such serendipity transcends the bounds of plausibility. Both names undoubtedly originated from sea-faring Picts.--MWAK (talk) 18:37, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

text: You didn't provide any sources. Since the Vikings never settled anywhere in the Netherlands apart from the northeastern region (temporarily), that's implausible. "Zeeland" is a fairly self-explanatory name to give to a province that's half swallowed by the sea. I went over the sources again and the oldest mentions were of "Holtlant", which unambiguously would mean "wood(s)-land". Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology Holland "Holtland"' (=woodland) utter nonsense! 

message: Since yesterday an anon editor has been adding the following statement repeatedly.
:In the successful  Dutch Rebellion of the northern, largely Protestant provinces against the oppressing Roman Catholic
This statement is seriously problematic in my view because (1) WP:V it is unsourced (2) it violates WP:NPOV most clearly in the word "oppressing" (3) It is off topic WP:TOPIC as this article is not about all Dutch provinces, nor it is on the Dutch revolt. </br>
In addition, the traditional view that the Dutch revolt was solely a religious conflict (as implied in the edit summary) is no longer mainstream as economic (tax, trade limitations) and other issues are nowadays considered essential to the conflict. 
In spite of my request to do so, the anon editor has not given any additional information nor come here to talk. Arnoutf (talk) 07:27, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Antwerp was, not I think the countryside & smaller cities. But yes it should be removed. Johnbod (talk) 14:09, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  repeated insertion of unsourced non neutral text by anon editor 

message: The heading of the page says that "Holland is a region and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. The name Holland is also frequently used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands". This implies that Holland formally means "North Holland and South Holland" (or the area of the former County of Holland), and informally means "the Netherlands". However, I can't find any reliable source that confirms this. It rather seems that Holland is an informal region in the western Netherlands, thus both uses of the name "Holland" are informal. If so, the text should be edited so that it doesn't seem to suggest that one meaning is more formal than the other. Z28G (talk) 18:27, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there is no logical implication. I doubt many people will understand the text in this way. However, adding "geographical" might prevent any ambiguity.--MWAK (talk) 07:43, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

text: There's no point in trying to rewrite history. The Dutch government frequently used Holland to refer to the Netherlands. The football team, and other international sports teams, Olympics ( Holland until 1992 Netherlands_at_the_Olympics ) , EuroVision etc were all called Holland; it wasn't just an "informal usage". Until 2019 when there was an official re-branding. "Dutch government ditches Holland to rebrand as the Netherlands" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/04/holland-the-netherlands-dutch-government-rebrand Even now the official website is holland.com, while netherlands.com is a cybersquatter site. 194.207.86.26 (talk) 22:04, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: In a tourist context "Holland" was preferred. Our article already mentions the official Holland Promotion (with a deliberate English name) meant in the 19th century to attract wealthy Americans. However, the Guardian article, though satisfyingly using Wikipedia information :o), overstates the rebranding a bit. When the Dutch Olympics Committee turned, using Holland had already become distinctly oldfashioned. I can't remember whether in the Eurovision Song Festival listings "Holland' was ever used.--MWAK (talk) 07:30, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

text: Of course they'd use the English name in English promotions just like the English use fr:Angleterre when advertising in France. 194.207.86.26 (talk) 06:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

text: Agree with others - no changes needed. Johnbod (talk) 14:07, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formal vs. informal meaning of "Holland"