orange dutch

It's time to learn about the Netherlands, since they just advanced to the World Cup finals.

Burning question for the geographically and etymologically dumb, like me: Why are people from the Netherlands and the language they speak called the Dutch?

The Dutch people call their own country Nederland, themselves Nederlanders, and their language Nederlands. But in English, we refer to them as Dutch. The simpliest explanation I can find is this: The term Dutch is derived from terms that date back to the 15th centuries. Dietsch (or Diets) is the colloquial word for the Middle Dutch language. Middle Dutch, a collective of a number of West Germanic dialects, was spoken in the Low Countries from 1150 to 1500. Standard Dutch is derived from the Middle Dutch language.

And is Holland the same as the Netherlands?

No, Holland is the former name for a part of what is now the Netherlands. That part makes up for two of twelve provinces (North Holland and South Holland) of the current Netherlands. Amsterdam is capital of North Holland.

So now you know more about one of the countries in the finals. The other slot belongs to either Spain (phew - the people and language we call Spaniards and Spanish, respectively) or Germany. But wait, German in German is Deutsch, which sounds just like Dutch - yikes! My head hurts thinking about stuff like this.