Like an Atlantis in reverse, Holland emerged, dripping, from the sea. The country was once mainly a pattern of islands, precariously separated from the North Sea by dunes. As the centuries rolled past, these islands were patiently stitched together with characteristic Dutch ingenuity and hard work. The outcome is a canvas-flat, green-and-silver Mondrian of a country, with nearly half its territory and two-thirds of its 16 million inhabitants below sea level. Perhaps no other country has so intimate a relationship with the sea, after 2,000 years of raising dikes against its permanent threat. Holland without water is as unimaginable as Arabia without sand.
What's in a Name? -- Let's clear up some matters of nomenclature. Dutch is the result of a 15th-century misunderstanding on the part of the English, who couldn't distinguish too clearly between the people of the northern Low Countries and the various German peoples. So, to describe the former, they simply corrupted the German "Deutsch" to Dutch.
The term Holland is a bit of a misnomer since, strictly speaking, it refers only to the provinces of Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland and not to the whole country. The Dutch themselves call their country Nederland (the Netherlands) and themselves Nederlanders. But they recognize that Dutch and Holland are popular internationally and are here to stay so, being a practical people, they make use of them.
