What is the difference between "Holland" and "The Netherlands"?

Question

What is the difference between "Holland" and "The Netherlands"?

Answer 1

Holland is a province in the Netherlands. The Country is called Niederland.

How many Brits, when they see a car marked 'D', think it's from the Netherlands - (D for Dutch) ?

The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, but the parliament is in Den Hague.

Answer 2

holland is a provence in the netherlands, there are several provinces  but holland is actually  two north holland capital amsterdam and south holland capital rotterdam

capt jack, thats a better answer!!

Answer 3

It's a bit like the difference between England and the United Kingdom.  Or the difference between California and the USA.

Holland is part of the Netherlands.  It is actually not a nation in its own right, but a province within the Netherlands.  The Netherlands has 12 provinces (in a similar way to the UK having 4 countries and the USA 50 states) of which North Holland and South Holland are 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland

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Answer 4

People often refer to the Netherlands as Holland in the same way as they use the name of the largest country England to mean the larger whole of the United Kingdom.  It's a very common mistake, but being a commonly used name for the Netherlands does not make it the English word for the country as a whole.

Answer 5

Holland is the english way of naming that country.   The dutch people call there own country by The netherlands.

Same with Germany, we call it Germany (the english language way) but the Germans call their own country Deutchland.

Answer 6

Ok, Capt Jack is the closest despite being told he isn't!

Actually here in the Netherlands it is known as 'Nederland' and hence the Netherlands is the English version(or to be more precise the "Kingdom of the Netherlands" literally translated

Holland is indeed part of the Netherlands - 2 out of the 12 provinces (although personally I would equate a province to a US state or a UK county and not a country)  Amsterdam as the capital city being in 'Noord Holland' (North Holland) and Den Haag being the seat of the government in 'Zuid Holland' (South Holland).  

Actually the provinces have completely different cities as their provincial capitals.  Haarlem being for North Holland and Den Haag for South Holland

Holland is however commonly used abroad, especially in sports such as football

So this is it in a nutshell!