gwnn, on 2013-August-23, 14:41, said:
I'm looking for any other use of 'nether lands' and there's some song with that title but really I don't think this expression has any other meaning other than the country where I live in right now. It's the same as (at the risk of bringing it up again) 'United States.' Nobody in their right mind would use 'I live in united states' when referring to, say, a NATO country, or an EU country, or the Russian Federation, or any other entity that fits the term maybe technically. The expression is now hijacked, there is no turning back. If someone wants to use nether lands, they will use it at their own peril and should expect confusion to ensue.
Indeed. The official name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos, which translates to United Mexican States or United States of Mexico. But no one would ever think of calling them The United States.
I had no idea that "alp" was an ordinary word meaning a high mountain, although I'm not surprised. But does any actually use it any more as a generic term? Similarly, does the phrase "a channel island" ever come up? Lots of these names originally came from descriptive phrases, but over time they become so associated with a specific place that it becomes difficult to use the original, generic phrase.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that MOST place names that are more than a couple of centuries old are like this. Early people didn't make up arbitrary names for people, places, and things, they were always just describing them. That's why so many places have common suffixes like (in English) "land" and "shire". In America we have many places with Indian names -- these all were descriptive terms in the native languages. Surnames are often derived from occupations (John Smith was originally John the blacksmith), family relationships (Fred Johnson was Fred, son of John), or places (Leonardo da Vinci's father was Piero da Vinci, who actually lived in Vinci). But we no longer even notice that surnames are also ordinary words -- if you're introduced to someone named "weaver", you wouldn't be inclined to expect them to work in the fabric trade (in fact, whenever you hear of people whose names
are descriptive of what they do, it seems like an interesting coincidence).
Language is a very curious thing.