Netherlands (terminology) - The Netherlands

The Netherlands

'Netherlands' literally means 'Low countries' or 'Lowlands'. Dutch neder and its English cognate nether both mean 'down(ward), below'. The English word is now uncommon, as is the Dutch, mostly replaced by lower in English or laag in Dutch. Neder or nether may simply have denoted the geographical characteristics of the land, both flat and down river. This may have applied to the singular form Nederland, or Niderland. It was a geographical description of low regions in the Germanic lands. Thus it was also used to refer specifically to the estuaries of the Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine, including the Lower Rhineland.

However the plural form Nederlanden, in use since the 15th century for the area known as the Burgundian Netherlands, probably has a different origin, if only because most of the area that is and was designated by the term is not flat, low-lying, or even down-river. The Francophone Burgundian central government used the deixic terms pays de par deça (lands over here; from the standpoint of the Duke, who at this time resided in Brussels most of the time), as opposed to pays de par dela (lands over there) for the Burgundian homeland. This was literally translated into Dutch at the time as landen van herwaarts over and landen van derwaarts over, respectively. Mary of Hungary started to use the equally deixic expression pays d'embas (lands down-here) interchangeably with pays de par deça in official correspondence, as did Charles V in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549. This was translated with the deixic construction Neder-landen in contemporary Dutch official documents. Such constructions with neder were already old at the time. For instance Melis Stoke used the term Neder Zassen for Lower-Saxony in his Rijmkroniek (chronicle in rhyme, c. 1290): "Old books hear I mentioning/ That all the land below Nijmegen/ Formerly was called Lower Saxony(neder Zassen)." In modern Dutch these constructions are still used, cf. Neder-Oostenrijk (Lower Austria), Neder-Silezië (Lower Silesia). In all cases the word neder does not imply any connection with the character of the landscape, but is used in opposition to constructions with e.g. opper (upper).