Usage
The proper name of the area in both Dutch and English is "Holland". "Holland" is a part of the Netherlands. "Holland" is informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands. (This example of pars pro toto or synecdoche is similar to the tendency to refer to the United Kingdom as "England".)
The people of Holland are referred to as "Hollanders" in both Dutch and English. Today this refers specifically to people from the current provinces of North Holland and South Holland. Strictly speaking, the term "Hollanders" does not refer to people from the other provinces in the Netherlands, but colloquially "Hollanders" is sometimes mistakenly used in this wider sense.
In Dutch, the Dutch word "Hollands" is the adjectival form for "Holland". The Dutch word "Hollands" is also colloquially and occasionally used by some Dutch people in the sense of "Nederlands" (Dutch), but then often with the intention of contrasting with other types of Dutch people or language, for example Limburgish, the Belgian form of the Dutch language ("Flemish"), or even any southern variety of Dutch within the Netherlands itself.
However, in English there is no commonly used adjective for "Holland". "Dutch" refers to the Netherlands as a whole, not just the region of Holland. "Hollands" is ordinarily expressed in English in two ways:
- a possessive construction (e.g. "Holland's economic power"); or
- an "of Holland" or "from Holland" construction (e.g. "the Maid of Holland"; "a girl from Holland").
The following usages apply in certain limited situations but do not ordinarily serve as the English equivalent of the commonly used Dutch adjective "Hollands".
- Occasionally, the noun "Holland" is used in apposition (e.g. "the Holland Society").
- The adjective "Hollandic" is occasionally used by some historians and other academic writers as an adjective for Holland. Historians who use the word tend to reserve it to pre-Napoleonic Holland. Hollandic is also the name linguists give to the dialect spoken in Holland.
- The adjective "Hollandish" is a word in English but is no longer in use.
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