Why aren’t the Netherlands called Holland?

Many people grew up referring exclusively to ‘Holland’, so why is it now always ‘the Netherlands’?

For those of us of a certain age, the Netherlands will always be Holland. It used to be routine for broadcasters and everyday conversation to refer to them that way – so what changed?

The simple explanation is that Holland is not the formal name of the country as we know it today, but is simply a region of the country that has for centuries been used as a shorthand for the country as a whole. More specifically, ‘Holland’ is made up of North Holland and South Holland, which are just two of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands.