The Low Countries comprise the coastal Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta region in Western Europe, whose definition usually includes the modern countries of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. [1] [2] Both Belgium and the Netherlands derived their names from earlier names for the region, due to nether meaning "low" and Belgica being the Latinized name for all the Low Countries, [3] a nomenclature that became obsolete after Belgium's secession in 1830.
The Low Countries—and the Netherlands and Belgium—had in their history exceptionally many and widely varying names, resulting in equally varying names in different languages. There is diversity even within languages: the use of one word for the country and another for the adjective form is common. This holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form for the country "the Netherlands". Moreover, many languages have the same word for both the country of the Netherlands and the region of the Low Countries, e.g., French (les Pays-Bas), Spanish (los Países Bajos) and Portuguese (Países Baixos). The complicated nomenclature is a source of confusion for outsiders, and is due to the long history of the language, the culture and the frequent change of economic and military power within the Low Countries over the past 2,000 years.
The historic Low Countries made up much of Frisia, home to the Frisii, and the Roman provinces of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior, home to the Belgae and Germanic peoples like the Batavi. Throughout the centuries, the names of these ancestors have been in use as a reference to the Low Countries, in an attempt to define a collective identity. In the 4th and 5th centuries a Frankish confederation of Germanic tribes significantly made a lasting change by entering the Roman provinces and starting to build the Carolingian Empire, of which the Low Countries formed a core part.
By the 8th century, most of the Franks had exchanged their Germanic Frankish language for the Latin-derived Romances of Gaul. The Franks that stayed in the Low Countries had kept their original language, i.e., Old Dutch, also known as "Old Low Franconian" among linguists. At the time the language was spoken, it was known as *þiudisk, meaning "of the people"—as opposed to the Latin language "of the clergy"—which is the source of the English word Dutch. Now an international exception, it used to have in the Dutch language itself a cognate with the same meaning, i.e., Diets(c) or Duuts(c).
The designation "low" to refer to the region has also been in use many times. First by the Romans, who called it Germania "Inferior". After the Frankish empire was divided several times, most of it became the Duchy of Lower Lorraine in the 10th century, where the Low Countries politically have their origin. [4] [5] Lower Lorraine disintegrated into a number of duchies, counties and bishoprics. Some of these became so powerful, that their names were used as a pars pro toto for the Low Countries, i.e., Flanders, Holland and to a lesser extent Brabant. Burgundian, and later Habsburg rulers [6] [7] added one by one the Low Countries' polities in a single territory, and it was at their francophone courts that the term les pays de par deçà arose, that would develop in Les Pays-Bas or in English "Low Countries" or "Netherlands".
English is one of the only languages to use the adjective Dutch for the language of the Netherlands and Flanders. Its connection to the vernacular can be traced back to the Early Medieval Latin term Theodiscus, meaning 'of the people' or 'popular language.' In the Middle Ages, Theodiscus was used to distinguish the spoken language of the common Germanic folk from Latin, which was the language of the church, science, and administration. It served as a way to categorize languages based on their practical and social functions. [8] The word is derived from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz . The stem of this word, *þeudō , meant "people" in Proto-Germanic, and *-iskaz was an adjective-forming suffix, of which -ish is the Modern English form. [9] Theodiscus was its Latinised form [10]
It was first recorded in 786, when the Bishop of Ostia writes to Pope Adrian I about a synod taking place in Corbridge, England, where the decisions are being written down "tam Latine quam theodisce" meaning "in Latin as well as Germanic". [11] [12] [13] So in this sense theodiscus referred to the Germanic language spoken in Great Britain, which was later replaced by the name Englisc. [14]
By the late 14th century, þēodisc had given rise to Middle English duche and its variants, which were used as a blanket term for all the non-Scandinavian Germanic languages spoken on the European mainland. Historical linguists have noted that the medieval "Duche" itself most likely shows an external Middle Dutch influence, in that it shows a voiced alveolar stop rather than the expected voiced dental fricative. This would be a logical result of the Medieval English wool trade, which brought the English in close linguistic contact with the cloth merchants living in the Dutch-speaking cities of Bruges and Ghent, who at the time, referred to their language as dietsc. [15]
Its exact meaning is dependent on context, but tends to be vague regardless. [16] When concerning language, the word duche could be used as a hypernym for several languages (The North est Contrey which lond spekyn all maner Duche tonge – The North [of Europe] is an area, in which all lands speak all manner of "Dutch" languages) but it could also suggest singular use (In Duche a rudder is a knyght – In "Dutch" a rudder [cf. Dutch: ridder] is a knight) in which case linguistic and/or geographic pointers need to be used to determine or approximate what the author would have meant in modern terms, which can be difficult. [17] For example, in his poem Constantyne, the English chronicler John Hardyng (1378–1465) specifically mentions the inhabitants of three Dutch-speaking fiefdoms (Flanders, Guelders and Brabant) as travel companions, but also lists the far more general "Dutchemēne" and "Almains", the latter term having an almost equally broad meaning, though being more restricted in its geographical use; usually referring to people and locaties within modern Germany, Switzerland and Austria:
He went to Roome with greate power of Britons strong, | He went to Rome with a large number of Britons, |
—Excerpt from "Constantyne", John Hardyng | —J. Rivington, The Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng |
By early 17th century, general use of the word Dutch had become exceedingly rare in Great Britain and it became an exonym specifically tied to the modern Dutch, i.e. the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the Low Countries. Many factors facilitated this, including close geographic proximity, trade and military conflicts, for instance the Anglo-Dutch Wars. [20] [21] Due to the latter, "Dutch" also became a pejorative label pinned by English speakers on almost anything they regard as inferior, irregular, or contrary to their own practice. Examples include "Dutch treat" (each person paying for himself), "Dutch courage" (boldness inspired by alcohol), "Dutch wife" (a type of sex doll) and "Double Dutch" (gibberish, nonsense) among others. [22]
In the United States, the word "Dutch" remained somewhat ambiguous until the start of the 19th century. Generally, it referred to the Dutch, their language or the Dutch Republic, but it was also used as an informal monniker (for example in the works of James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving) for people who would today be considered Germans or German-speaking, most notably the Pennsylvania Dutch. This lingering ambiguity was most likely caused by close proximity to German-speaking immigrants, who referred to themselves or (in the case of the Pennsylvania Dutch) their language as "Deutsch" or "Deitsch", rather than archaic use of the term "Dutch" [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]
In the Dutch language itself, Old Dutch *thiudisk evolved into a southern variant duutsc and a western variant dietsc in Middle Dutch, which were both known as duytsch in Early Modern Dutch. In the earliest sources, its primary use was to differentiate between Germanic and the Romance dialects, as expressed by the Middle Dutch poet Jan van Boendale, who wrote: [20] [29]
Want tkerstenheit es gedeelt in tween, | |
—Excerpt from "Brabantsche Yeesten", by Jan van Boendale (1318) [30] |
During the High Middle Ages "Dietsc/Duutsc" was increasingly used as an umbrella term for the specific Germanic dialects spoken in the Low Countries, its meaning being largely implicitly provided by the regional orientation of medieval Dutch society: apart from the higher echelons of the clergy and nobility, mobility was largely static and hence while "Dutch" could by extension also be used in its earlier sense, referring to what today would be called Germanic dialects as opposed to Romance dialects, in many cases it was understood or meant to refer to the language now known as Dutch. [20] [21] [31] Apart from the sparsely populated eastern borderlands, there was little to no contact with contemporary speakers of German dialects, let alone a concept of the existence of German as language in its modern sense among the Dutch. Because medieval trade focused on travel by water and with the most heavily populated areas adjacent to Northwestern France, the average 15th century Dutchman stood a far greater chance of hearing French or English than a dialect of the German interior, despite its relative geographical closeness. [32] Medieval Dutch authors had a vague, generalized sense of common linguistic roots between their language and various German dialects, but no concept of speaking the same language existed. Instead they saw their linguistic surroundings mostly in terms of small scale regiolects. [33]
In the 19th century, the term "Diets" was revived by Dutch linguists and historians as a poetic name for Middle Dutch and its literature. [34]
In the second half of the 16th century the neologism "Nederduytsch" (literally: Nether-Dutch, Low-Dutch) appeared in print, in a way combining the earlier "Duytsch" and "Nederlandsch" into one compound. The term was preferred by many leading contemporary grammarians such as Balthazar Huydecoper, Arnold Moonen and Jan ten Kate because it provided a continuity with Middle Dutch ("Duytsch" being the evolution of medieval "Dietsc"), was at the time considered the proper translation of the Roman Province of Germania Inferior (which not only encompassed much of the contemporary Dutch-speaking area / Netherlands, but also added classical prestige to the name) and amplified the dichotomy between Early Modern Dutch and the "Dutch" (German) dialects spoken around the Middle and Upper Rhine which had begun to be called overlantsch of hoogduytsch (literally: Overlandish, High-"Dutch") by Dutch merchants sailing upriver. [35] Though "Duytsch" forms part of the compound in both Nederduytsch and Hoogduytsch, this should not be taken to imply that the Dutch saw their language as being especially closely related to the German dialects spoken in Southerwestern Germany. On the contrary, the term "Hoogduytsch" specifically came into being as a special category because Dutch travelers visiting these parts found it hard to understand the local vernacular: in a letter dated to 1487 a Flemish merchant from Bruges instructs his agent to conduct trade transactions in Mainz in French, rather than the local tongue to avoid any misunderstandings. [35] In 1571 use of "Nederduytsch" greatly increased because the Synod of Emden chose the name "Nederduytsch Hervormde Kerk" as the official designation of the Dutch Reformed Church. The synods choice of "Nederduytsch" over the more dominant "Nederlandsch", was inspired by the phonological similarities between "neder-" and "nederig" (the latter meaning "humble") and the fact that it did not contain a worldly element ("land"), whereas "Nederlandsch" did. [35]
As the Dutch increasingly referred to their own language as "Nederlandsch" or "Nederduytsch", the term "Duytsch" became more ambiguous. Dutch humanists, started to use "Duytsch" in a sense which would today be called "Germanic", for example in a dialogue recorded in the influential Dutch grammar book "Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst", published in 1584:
R. ghy zeyde flux dat de Duytsche taal by haar zelven bestaat/ ick heb my wel laten segghen, | R: You've just said that the Dutch language exists in its own right, |
—Excerpt from "Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst", by Hendrik Laurenszoon Spiegel (1584) [36] [30] |
In the Dutch language itself, Diets(c) (later Duyts) was used as one of several Exonym and endonyms. As the Dutch increasingly referred to their own language as "Nederlandsch" or "Nederduytsch", the term "Duytsch" became more ambiguous. Dutch humanists, started to use "Duytsch" in a sense which would today be called "Germanic". Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the nomenclature gradually became more fixed, with "Nederlandsch" and "Nederduytsch" becoming the preferred terms for Dutch and with "Hooghduytsch" referring to the language today called German. Initially the word "Duytsch" itself remained vague in exact meaning, but after the 1650s a trend emerges in which "Duytsch" is taken as the shorthand for "Hooghduytsch". This process was probably accelerated by the large number of Germans employed as agricultural day laborers and mercenary soldiers in the Dutch Republic and the ever increasing popularity of "Nederlandsch" and "Nederduytsch" over "Duytsch", the use of which had already been in decline for over a century, thereby acquiring its current meaning (German) in Dutch. [37] [29] [38]
In the late 19th century "Nederduits" was reintroduced to Dutch through the German language, where prominent linguists, such as the Brothers Grimm and Georg Wenker, in the nascent field of German and Germanic studies used the term to refer to Germanic dialects which had not taken part in the High German consonant shift. Initially this group consisted of Dutch, English, Low German and Frisian, but in modern scholarship only refers to Low German-varieties. Hence in contemporary Dutch, "Nederduits" is used to describe Low German varieties, specifically those spoken in Northern Germany as the varieties spoken in the eastern Netherlands, while related, are referred to as "Nedersaksisch". [39]
Place names with "low(er)" or neder, lage, nieder, nether, nedre, bas and inferior are used everywhere in Europe. They are often used in contrast with an upstream or higher area whose name contains words such as "upper", boven, oben, supérieure and haut. For example, Niderlant is mentioned in the 12th century legend Nibelungenlied, where it is located in the lower Rhine region around the German town Xanten. [40] In this context the higher ground is around the Upper Rhine plain around the German city of Worms, where the events of the poem take place.
Both downstream at the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, and low at the mountainless European plain at the North Sea apply to the Low Countries. The politically related geographical location of the "upper" ground changed over time tremendously, and rendered over time several names for the area now known as the Low Countries:
Apart from its topographic usage for the then multi-government area of the Low Countries, the 15th century saw the first attested use of Nederlandsch as a term for the Dutch language, by extension hinting at a common ethnonym for people living in different fiefdoms. [43] [44] This was used alongside the long-standing Duytsch (the Early Modern spelling of the earlier Dietsc or Duutsc). The most common Dutch term for the Dutch language remained Nederduytsch or Nederduitsch until it was gradually superseded by Nederlandsch in the early 1900s, the latter becoming the sole name for the language by 1945. Earlier, from the mid-16th century on, the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) had divided the Low Countries into the northern Dutch Republic and the southern Spanish Netherlands, introducing a distinction, i.e. Northern vs. Southern Netherlands; the first evolved into present-day the Netherlands, the latter into present-day Belgium, after a brief unification in the early 19th century.
The English adjective "Netherlandish", meaning "from the Low Countries", is derived directly from the Dutch adjective Nederlands or Nederlandsch, and the French and German equivalents. It is now rare in general use, but remains used in history, especially in reference to art or music produced anywhere in the Low Countries during the 15th and early 16th centuries. "Early Netherlandish painting", has replaced "Flemish Primitives", despite the equivalents remaining current in French, Dutch and other languages; the latter is now only seen in poorly-translated material from a language that uses it. In English the pejorative sense of "primitive" makes the term impossible to use in such a context.
In music the Franco-Flemish School is also known as the Netherlandish School. Later art and artists from the southern Catholic provinces of the Low Countries are usually called Flemish and those from the northern Protestant provinces Dutch, but art historians sometimes use "Netherlandish art" for art of the Low Countries produced before 1830, i.e., until the secession of Belgium from the Netherlands to distinguish the period from what came after. Apart from this largely intellectual use, the term "Netherlandish" as adjective is not commonly used in English, unlike its Dutch equivalent.
Historic and contemporary toponyms include:
Many languages have a cognate or calque derived from the Dutch adjective Nederlands:
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The Dutch equivalent 'Nederland' knows a less common variation without the 'd', which only occurs conjugated, with a suffix. It is used to ads an archaic, patriotic, exalted, poetic or academic meaning.
The Low Countries (Dutch : Lage Landen) refers to the historical region de Nederlanden: those principalities located on and near the mostly low-lying land around the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. That region corresponds to all of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, forming the Benelux. The name "Benelux" is formed from joining the first two or three letters of each country's name Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. It was first used to name the customs agreement that initiated the union (signed in 1944) and is now used more generally to refer to the geopolitical and economical grouping of the three countries, while "Low Countries" is used in a more cultural or historical context.
In many languages the nomenclature "Low Countries" can both refer to the cultural and historical region comprising present-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and to "the Netherlands" alone, e.g., Les Pays-Bas in French, Los Países Bajos in Spanish and i Paesi Bassi in Italian. Several other languages have literally translated "Low Countries" into their own language to refer to the Dutch language:
Flemish (Dutch : Vlaams) is derived from the name of the County of Flanders (Dutch : Graafschap Vlaanderen), in the early Middle Ages the most influential county in the Low Countries, and the economic powerhouse of Northern Europe. It became in the 14th century the residence of the Burgundian dukes, establishing further its cultural dominance. Due to its cultural importance, "Flemish" became in certain languages a pars pro toto for the Low Countries and the Dutch language. This was certainly the case in France, since the Flemish are the first Dutch speaking people for them to encounter. In French-Dutch dictionaries of the 16th century, "Dutch" is almost always translated as Flameng. [48]
Fleming is also the name used for immigrants from the Low Countries, most of them from Flanders, who came to Scotland over a 600 year period, between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries. [49] [50] The name is still a common Scottish surnames [51] and Clan Fleming is also an officially recognized clan by the Lord Lyon King of Arms. [52] The Flemish came to Scotland in several waves. The earliest Flemish settlers in Britain came with William the Conqueror in 1066 with the Norman Conquest. The Flemish were closely allied with the Normans, because William’s wife was the daughter of a Count of Flanders.
A calque of Vlaams as a reference to the language and the region of the Low Countries was also in use in Spain. In the 16th century, when Spain inherited the Habsburg Netherlands, the whole area of the Low Countries was indicated as Flandes, and the inhabitants of Flandes were called Flamencos. For example, the Eighty Years' War between the rebellious Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire was called Las guerras de Flandes [53] and the Spanish army that was based in the Low Countries was named the Army of Flanders (Spanish : Ejército de Flandes).
The name Vlaanderen is formed from a stem flām-, meaning "flooded area" (cf. Norwegian flaum ‘flood’, English dialectal fleam ‘millstream; trench or gully in a meadow that drains it’), with a suffix -ðr- attached. [54] The Old Dutch form is flāmisk, which becomes vlamesc, vlaemsch in Middle Dutch and Vlaams in Modern Dutch. [55] Flemish is now exclusively used to describe the majority of Dutch dialects found in Flanders, and a reference to the region where they are spoken, corresponding with the Dutch language region of Belgium. This use is also a pars pro toto, since the region includes not only the historic county of Flanders where the Dutch dialect (West) Flemish is spoken, but also Limburg and the historic region of Brabant, where respectively the Dutch dialects Liburgish and Brabantian are spoken. Calques of Vlaams in other languages, in most cases referencing to this region, its people and the language:
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In many languages including English, (a calque of) "Holland" is a common pars pro toto for the Netherlands as a whole. Even the Dutch use this sometimes, although this may be resented outside the two modern provinces that make up historical Holland. Strictly speaking, Holland is only the central-western region of the country comprising two of the twelve provinces. They are North Holland and South Holland. Holland has, particularly for outsiders, long become a pars pro toto name for the whole nation, similar to the use of Russia for the (former) Soviet Union, or England for the United Kingdom.
The use is sometimes discouraged. For example, the "Holland" entry in the style guide of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers states: "Do not use when you mean the Netherlands (of which it is a region), with the exception of the Dutch football team, which is conventionally known as Holland". [56]
In 2019, the Dutch government announced that it would only communicate and advertise under its real name "the Netherlands" in the future, and stop describing itself as Holland. They stated: “It has been agreed that the Netherlands, the official name of our country, should preferably be used.” [57] [58] From 2019 onwards, the nation's football team will solely be called the Netherlands in any official setting. [57] Nonetheless, the name "Holland" is still widely used for the Netherlands national football team. [59] [60]
From the 17th century onwards, the County of Holland was the most powerful region in the current Netherlands. The counts of Holland were also counts of Hainaut, Friesland and Zeeland from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Holland remained most powerful during the period of the Dutch Republic, dominating foreign trade, and hence most of the Dutch traders encountered by foreigners were from Holland, which explains why the Netherlands is often called Holland overseas. [61]
After the demise of the Dutch Republic under Napoleon, that country became known as the Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810). This is the only time in history that "Holland" became an official designation of the entire Dutch territory. Around the same time, the former countship of Holland was dissolved and split up into two provinces, later known as North Holland and South Holland, because one Holland province by itself was considered too dominant in area, population and wealth compared to the other provinces. Today the two provinces making up Holland, including the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, remain politically, economically and demographically dominant – 37% of the Dutch population live there. In most other Dutch provinces, particularly in the south including Flanders (Belgium), the word Hollander is commonly used in either colloquial or pejorative sense to refer to the perceived superiority or supposed arrogance of people from the Randstad – the main conurbation of Holland proper and of the Netherlands.
In 2009, members of the First Chamber drew attention to the fact that in Dutch passports, for some EU-languages a translation meaning "Kingdom of Holland" was used, as opposed to "Kingdom of the Netherlands". As replacements for the Estonian Hollandi Kuningriik, Hungarian Holland Királyság, Romanian Regatul Olandei and Slovak Holandské kráľovstvo, the parliamentarians proposed Madalmaade Kuningriik, Németalföldi Királyság, Regatul Țărilor de Jos and Nizozemské Kráľovstvo, respectively. Their reasoning was that "if in addition to Holland a recognisable translation of the Netherlands does exist in a foreign language, it should be regarded as the best translation" and that "the Kingdom of the Netherlands has a right to use the translation it thinks best, certainly on official documents". [62] Although the government initially refused to change the text except for the Estonian, recent Dutch passports feature the translation proposed by the First Chamber members. Calques derived from Holland to refer to the Dutch language in other languages:
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Toponyms:
As the Low Country's prime duchy, with the only and oldest scientific centre (the University of Leuven), Brabant has served as a pars pro toto for the whole of the Low Countries, for example in the writings of Desiderius Erasmus in the early 16th century. [63]
Perhaps of influence for this pars pro toto usage is the Brabantian holding of the ducal title of Lower Lorraine. In 1190, after the death of Godfrey III, Henry I became Duke of Lower Lorraine, where the Low Countries have their political origin. By that time the title had lost most of its territorial authority. According to protocol, all his successors were thereafter called Dukes of Brabant and Lower Lorraine (often called Duke of Lothier).
Brabant symbolism served again a role as national symbols during the formation of Belgium. The national anthem of Belgium is called the Brabançonne (English: "the Brabantian"), and the Belgium flag has taken its colors from the Brabant coat of arms: black, yellow and red. This was influenced by the Brabant Revolution (French : Révolution brabançonne, Dutch : Brabantse Omwenteling), sometimes referred to as the "Belgian Revolution of 1789–90" in older writing, that was an armed insurrection that occurred in the Austrian Netherlands (modern-day Belgium) between October 1789 and December 1790. The revolution led to the brief overthrow of Habsburg rule and the proclamation of a short-lived polity, the United Belgian States. Some historians have seen it as a key moment in the formation of a Belgian nation-state, and an influence on the Belgian Revolution of 1830.
Holland, Flanders and 15 other counties, duchies and bishoprics in the Low Countries were united as the Seventeen Provinces in a personal union during the 16th century, covered by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which freed the provinces from their archaic feudal obligations.
In 1566, Philip II of Spain, heir of Charles V, sent an army of Spanish mercenaries to suppress political upheavals to the Seventeen Provinces. A number of southern provinces (Hainaut, Artois, Walloon Flanders, Namur, Luxembourg and Limburg) united in the Union of Arras (1579), and begun negotiations for a peace treaty with Spain. In response, nine northern provinces united in the Union of Utrecht (1579) against Spain. After the Flanders and the Brabant where reconquered by Spain, the remaining seven provinces (Frisia, Gelre, Holland, Overijssel, Groningen, Utrecht and Zeeland) signed 2 years later the declaration of independence of the Seven United Provinces. Since then, several ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy have bared that name.
The nomenclature Belgica is harking back to the ancient local tribe of the Belgae and the Roman province named after that tribe Gallia Belgica. Although a derivation of that name is now reserved for the Kingdom of Belgium, from the 15th to the 17th century the name was the usual Latin translation to refer to the entire Low Countries. This was from the start of the Dutch Revolt against Spain on maps heroically visualised as the Leo Belgicus [64] or personified as the maiden Belgica or Belgia. From the second half of the 16th century lingua Belgica or Belgicus became under the influence of Humanism also the Latinized name for the Dutch language in dictionaries. [65]
Throughout the centuries the Dutch attempted to define their collective identity by looking at their ancestors, the Batavi. As claimed by the Roman historian Tacitus, the Batavi were a brave Germanic tribe living in the Netherlands, probably in the Betuwe region. In Dutch, the adjective Bataafs ("Batavian") was used from the 15th to the 18th century, meaning "of, or relating to the Netherlands" (but not the southern Netherlands).
Other use:
Frankish was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes that erose in the Migration Period. Between the 5th and 9th centuries, the languages spoken by the Salian Franks in Belgium and the Netherlands evolved into Old Low Franconian (Dutch : Oudnederfrankisch), which formed the beginning of a separate Dutch language and is synonymous with Old Dutch. Compare the synonymous usage, in a linguistic context, of Old English versus Anglo-Saxon.
Frisii were an ancient tribe who lived in the coastal area of the Netherlands in Roman times. After the Migration Period the confederation of Anglo-Saxons, coming from the east, settled the region. Franks in the south, who were familiar with Roman texts, called the coastal region Frisia, and hence its inhabitants Frisians, even though not all of the inhabitants had Frisian ancestry. [68] [69] [70] After a Frisian Kingdom emerged in the mid-7th century in the Netherlands, with its center of power the city of Utrecht, [71] the Franks conquered the Frisians and converted them to Christianity. From that time on a colony of Frisians was living in Rome and thus the old name for the people from the Low Countries who came to Rome has remained in use in the national church of the Netherlands in Rome, which is called the Frisian church (Dutch : Friezenkerk; Italian : chiesa nazionale dei Frisoni). In 1989, this church was granted to the Dutch community in Rome.
Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics, and history, and sometimes involving neighbouring countries. The demonym associated with Flanders is Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish, which can also refer to the collective of Dutch dialects spoken in that area, or more generally the Belgian variant of Standard Dutch.
Nord is a département in Hauts-de-France region, France bordering Belgium. It was created from the western halves of the historical counties of Flanders and Hainaut, and the Bishopric of Cambrai. The modern coat of arms was inherited from the County of Flanders.
The Low Countries, historically also known as the Netherlands, is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Benelux" countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Geographically and historically, the area can also include parts of France and the German regions of East Frisia, Guelders and Cleves. During the Middle Ages, the Low Countries were divided into numerous semi-independent principalities.
Limburg, also known as Belgian Limburg, is a province in Belgium. It is the easternmost of the five Dutch-speaking provinces that together form the Region of Flanders, which is one of the three main political and cultural sub-divisions of modern-day Belgium. As of January 2024, Limburg had a population of 0.9 million.
Walloon Brabant is a province located in Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia. It borders on the province of Flemish Brabant and the provinces of Liège, Namur and Hainaut. Walloon Brabant's capital and largest city is Wavre.
In historical and comparative linguistics, Low Franconian is a linguistic category used to classify a number of historical and contemporary West Germanic varieties closely related to, and including, the Dutch language. Most dialects and languages included within this category are spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium (Flanders), in the Nord department of France, in western Germany, as well as in Suriname, South Africa and Namibia.
The Spanish Netherlands was the Habsburg Netherlands ruled by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs from 1556 to 1714. They were a collection of States of the Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries held in personal union by the Spanish Crown. This region comprised most of the modern states of Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as parts of northern France, the southern Netherlands, and western Germany, with the capital being Brussels. The Army of Flanders was given the task of defending the territory.
The Dutch are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common ancestry and culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Aruba, Suriname, Guyana, Curaçao, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States. The Low Countries were situated around the border of France and the Holy Roman Empire, forming a part of their respective peripheries and the various territories of which they consisted had become virtually autonomous by the 13th century. Under the Habsburgs, the Netherlands were organised into a single administrative unit, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain as the Dutch Republic. The high degree of urbanisation characteristic of Dutch society was attained at a relatively early date. During the Republic the first series of large-scale Dutch migrations outside of Europe took place.
Brabantian or Brabantish, also Brabantic or Brabantine, is a dialect group of the Dutch language. It is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant, which corresponded mainly to the Dutch province of North Brabant, the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant as well as the Brussels-Capital Region and the province of Walloon Brabant. Brabantian expands into small parts in the west of Limburg, and its strong influence on the Flemish dialects in East Flanders weakens toward the west. In a small area in the northwest of North Brabant (Willemstad), Hollandic is spoken. Conventionally, the Kleverlandish dialects are distinguished from Brabantian, but for no reason other than geography.
Theodiscus was a term used in the early Middle Ages to refer to the West Germanic languages. The Latin term was borrowed from the Germanic adjective meaning "of the people" but, unlike it, was used only to refer to languages. In Medieval Western Europe non-native Latin was the language of science, church and administration, hence Latin theodiscus and its Germanic counterparts were used as antonyms of Latin, to refer to the "native language spoken by the general populace". They were subsequently used in the Frankish Empire to denote the native Germanic vernaculars. As such, they were no longer used as antonym of Latin, but of walhisk, a language descendant from Latin, but nevertheless the speech of the general populace as well. In doing so Latin theodiscus and the Germanic reflexes of *þiudiskaz effectively obtained the meaning of "Germanic", or more specifically one of its local varieties – resulting in the English exonym "Dutch", the German endonym Deutsch, the modern Dutch word for "German", Duits, and the obsolete or poetic Dutch word for Dutch and its dialects such as Diets. In Romance languages the same word yielded the Italian word for "German", tedesco, and the old French word used for Dutch or, depending on the locality, German speakers, tiois.
Dutch is a West Germanic language, that originated from the Old Frankish dialects.
The Kingdom of Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French, and German.
Dutch dialects and varieties are primarily the dialects and varieties that are both cognate with the Dutch language and spoken in the same language area as the Standard Dutch. They are remarkably diverse and are found within Europe mainly in the Netherlands and northern Belgium.
Dutch is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders. Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects.
Flemish people or Flemings are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, Belgium, who speak Flemish Dutch. Flemish people make up the majority of Belgians, at about 60%.
The history of Flanders concerns not only the modern Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, which is now called "Flanders", but also several neighbouring territories and populations. Its historical core territory was in western Belgium between the coast and the Scheldt river.
Flemish is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch, Belgian Dutch, or Southern Dutch. Flemish is native to the region known as Flanders in northern Belgium; it is spoken by Flemings, the dominant ethnic group of the region. Outside of Belgium Flanders, it is also spoken to some extent in French Flanders and the Dutch Zeelandic Flanders.
The County of Flanders was one of the most powerful political entities in the medieval Low Countries, located on the North Sea coast of what is now Belgium. Unlike its neighbours, such as the counties of Brabant and Hainaut, it was within the territory of the Kingdom of France. The counts of Flanders held the most northerly part of the kingdom, and were among the original twelve peers of France. For centuries, the economic activity of the Flemish cities, such as Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, made Flanders one of the most affluent regions in Europe, and also gave them strong international connections to trading partners.
The Dutch language used in Belgium can also be referred to as Flemish Dutch or Belgian Dutch. Dutch is the mother tongue of about 60% of the population in Belgium, spoken by approximately 6.5 million out of a population of 11 million people. It is the only official language in Flanders, that is to say the provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Limburg, East Flanders and West Flanders. Alongside French, it is also an official language of Brussels. However, in the Brussels Capital Region and in the adjacent Flemish-Brabant municipalities, Dutch has been largely displaced by French as an everyday language.
The history of the term Wallon and its derivatives begins with the ancient Germanic word walh, which generally referred to Celtic- or Romance-speaking populations with whom the Germanic peoples had contact. However, the original form of its etymon and its precise origin in the French language has not been definitively established. It may have originated from Medieval Latin after being borrowed from Old Franconian. Another possibility is that it derives, through a change in suffix, from wallec, meaning "the langue d'oïl spoken in the Low Countries." The term wallon, as we know it today, first appeared in the 15th century in the Memoirs of the medieval chronicler Jean de Haynin. Over time, the semantic scope of Wallon and its derivatives, such as the toponym Wallonie, has gradually narrowed, becoming an endonym and continuing to diminish even today.
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