The little Dutch girl

You are probably familiar with the little Dutch girl -- she's a stereotype who's been appropriated for advertising purposes . She wears wooden shoes, has blonde hair and rosy cheeks and wears the "Dutch cap," also called the "Dutch bonnett," a cotton or lace cap with triangular flaps turned up on the sides. That's her to the right. 

A stereotype to be sure, but it reflects parts of Dutch culture and heritage. I suspect if you travel to the Netherlands, though, you would only see this representation as part of the tourist trade. I could be wrong -- some companies there might actually use the concept as part of their identity and marketing. I didn't check.

Now, if you were paying attention, you noticed that 1) the country I referenced in relation to Dutch people was the Netherlands, not Holland, and 2) the term "Dutch" has no apparent linguistic tie to either country name. What's up with that?

The answer is a bit complicated, involving etymology and including some disagreement about certain historical details, but we'll skip all that. First, "Dutch." The Netherlands and Germany share a linguistic heritage. And they were both once part of the Holy Roman Empire. During that time, both countries were referred to using a Germanic term now enshrined in Germany's name: Deutschland. 

If you mispronounce "Deutsch,"  as too many English speakers do, it may come out as "Dutch." One Dutch site I looked at went so far as to blame the whole problem on the British for corrupting the term. I wouldn't doubt it. Anyway the term stuck, though almost exclusively among English speakers, at least according to what I read. (By the by, this is also where the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Germans who settled in the region and their descendants, get their name.)

What do the Dutch call themselves? Pretty much "Nederlanders." I understand that some Nederlanders from Holland refer to themselves as Hollanders, but I gather that's pretty much like asking a Texan where he/she is from. The answer is almost overwhelmingly "Texas," which is supposed to be universally understood as including "America." We can be egoistic that way.

Speaking of Holland, why do most folks you run into say "Holland" instead of "The Netherlands"? The Netherlands comprises 12 provinces, the largest of which is Gelderland, which will become important to the story I will tell in upcoming posts. Two other provinces are North Holland and South Holland, or Noord Holland and Zuid Holland. 

These two provinces are home to three of the four largest cities in The Netherlands -- Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. They were also the economic center of the country going way back, so it became common among outsiders, who mainly dealt with people from those provinces, to refer to the whole nation by the name "Holland." 

Or, as one Dutch site put it, those two provinces have all the cool stuff -- things the tourists want to see -- windmills, tulips, that sort of thing. The Netherlands only recently formally decided that the official name of the country would be "The Netherlands," bringing a uniformity that will be useful to the tourism industry -- making it easier to promote the variety other notable aspects of the country. Say, promoting Van Gogh's birthplace, which is in the province of North Brandt. Or directing travelers to a town called Limburg, which produces a famous cheese named for the burg.

Why am I bringing all this up? What's the buried lede here? I mentioned a few posts ago that I discovered that Sharon's father, Earl, had roots that went back to France, a surprise, and to ... The Netherlands, a bigger surprise. So that sorta makes Sharon my little Dutch girl.

And, as I discovered this week, that heritage touches on the early colonization of the U.S. and involves notable names such as the Dutch West Indies company and Peter Stuyvesant. Next time, I'll introduce the central character in this tale, Brant Aertsz van Slichtenhorst.