No.0015 - Holland or Netherlands?

That depends on what you referring to, if you are talking about the country in which 16 million Dutch people live, then it is the Netherlands, but if you just visited Amsterdam, then "I went to Holland" maybe used.

Holland strictly refers to 2 provinces, North and South Holland, on the West coast of Netherlands. There are 12 Dutch provinces in total.




There are about 6 million people in North and South Holland, and the biggest three cities are situated in these two provinces as well, which are the capital city, Amsterdam; home of Europe's largest port, Rotterdam and the seat of government, The Hague.

Referring to the whole of Netherlands as "Holland" is an example of "pars pro toto", where a part of an object or concept represents the whole object or concept. The reverse is called "totum pro parte", for example the word "America" is commonly used to refer to the USA.