Dan
You should understand that "Netherlands" means low-lying country.
"Nether" means lower or underneath, and the Netherlands is a flat
land, a lot of which is lower than local sea level (hence the need
for dykes surrounding the land to prevent flooding.
At some stage all the provinces or kingdoms that clustered around the
north-western part of the Continent (Europe) became one state or
nation, a monarchy. But Holland, North and South, would always have
been referred to as low lands, netherlands, pays-bays or paises bajos
(note the lower case initials) until eventually they joined the other
provinces or kingdoms as one nation-state ... The Netherlands.
By the way, if you get a chance to visit this small country, the
dykes make for great subjects for photographs, whether it is the
inland dykes which line the canals or the sea defences which are
often quite large and at once beautifully geometric and natural. I
used to fly to air-to-ground ranges in Friesland, called Vliehors
and Noordvaader, and when it was sunny they were lovely. But when it
was poor weather with wind and rain coming in off the North Sea, it
was a forbidding place... a place perhaps where you might expect to
die. Our landmarks for navigation were the dykes and causeways in
the Ijselmeer. Look it up on a map to see what I mean.
Chris
At 09:11 -0700 1/5/02, Dan Lau wrote:
...snip
The name "Holland" is also used in Asia as the name of the
country now known as "The Netherlands". So I was wondering,
was Holland a separate country originally and is now
"absorbed" into The Netherlands? If so, when did this
happen? It probably happened after the 1600's because all
the exploration of the Far East were done by the "Dutch"
from Holland with their world reknown pilots. [By the way,
to go further off track, why are the people from Holland not
called Hollanders or Hollandians but "Dutch"?]
--
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C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
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+44 (0)7092 251126
mailto:imagopus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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http://www.threeshoes.co.uk
... a nascent photo library.
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