Why are people who live in Holland called Dutch?
Nadine Martin, Liverpool UK • Because they are of Germanic descent. Dutch = Deutsch. Peter Brooke, Kinmuck Scotland • I’d always thought it was a corruption of Deutsch, similar to the phrase ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’, who hail from Germany rather than the Netherlands. Ronald T Elsworth, Chicago USA • “There are the Potsdam Dutch, the Rotterdam Dutch, and the goddam Dutch”. I can’t remember the exact origin of this quote, except that it was from an English source at the time of our rivalry in the seventeenth century. At that time, dialects of “Deutsch” were both more distinctive and more widely used than today, and Englishmen considered Holland to be one of many German countries. After centuries of separate political and cultural development, Dutchmen have told me that they find the term offensive. Sadly, it remains the only word our language has for a “Hollander”. Bill Irving, Clacton UK • Specifically, the Netherlanders were the “Low Dutch”. People from German speaking countries were the “
