User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-24894325-20160620203004/@comment-1350697-20160623152715

User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-24894325-20160620203004/@comment-1350697-20160623152715 Dutch person reporting for duty. Generally speaking, I'd just have Dutch redirect to Netherlands, and treat the whole thing exactly like German and English.

Technically, Rembrandt lived and died in "the Dutch Republic", or "the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands", the entirety of which is today part of the country "the Netherlands". Nobody would correct you if you said Rembrandt was a painter from the Netherlands.

"Holland" is a specific area of the Netherlands -- the area Amsterdam is in, so a broken clock twice a day, but this is used so uniformly incorrectly to refer to the whole country that it's best to avoid it outside of direct quotes.

"The Low Countries" is a term referring to what is today the Benelux and the top bit of France, and also best avoided -- I don't think it's in current common usage, and it's a little like referring to someone from London as hailing from the British Isles; there's almost certainly something more specific to use.

tldr: "The Netherlands" is an accurate, accepted catch-all for most ways of referring to it historically, geographically, etc., that it's best to default to.