AHC: Dutch Germans

Burgundy never gains flanders and holland they remain princes in the empire and frances eventually gains flanders. When german nationalism appears dutch people think themselves as germans like bavarian, prussian and others. Atl name for germany is dutchland and german people are dutch people.
 
A shift in usage in the sixteenth or seventeenth century should do it. Dutch was still used to identify everything from the continental North Sea shore rather randomly up until the Anglo-Dutch wars. The word 'Hollander' was also in vogue for a while (used to identify all nationals of the United Provinces). Dialectally, you still find 'Dutch' identifying Germans (as in Pennsylvania-Dutch), but it's completely vanished from standard usage. There is no particular reason for this, especially given the Dutch do not self-identify as Duits.

Something as simple as an influential London printshop having an etymology-obsessed head typesetter could do it, I suppose.
 
A shift in usage in the sixteenth or seventeenth century should do it. Dutch was still used to identify everything from the continental North Sea shore rather randomly up until the Anglo-Dutch wars. The word 'Hollander' was also in vogue for a while (used to identify all nationals of the United Provinces). Dialectally, you still find 'Dutch' identifying Germans (as in Pennsylvania-Dutch), but it's completely vanished from standard usage. There is no particular reason for this, especially given the Dutch do not self-identify as Duits.

Something as simple as an influential London printshop having an etymology-obsessed head typesetter could do it, I suppose.

Hollander has the problem, that it's a 'Pars pro Toto', it just as correct as calling every Britisher an Englishman. Netherlander would be more 'correct'.

Also Dutch stands for more than 'Duits', Low Saxon dialects in the Low Countries used 'Duuts' and other Dutch dialects also used 'Diets' (which became tainted due to WW II).
It's even debated where a line in the first stanza in our national anthem the Wilhelmus stands for. Fun fact the full lyrics of the Wilhelmus is comprised of 15 stanzas, however usually only the 1st and sometimes also the 6th stanza are song.

Here's the contemporary version (the original dates from 1568 (probably by Filips van Marnix van St.Aldegonde)) of the first stanza.

Wilhelmus van Nassouwe
ben ik, van Duitsen bloed,
den vaderland getrouwe
blijf ik tot in den dood.
Een Prinse van Oranje
ben ik, vrij, onverveerd,
den Koning van Hispanje
heb ik altijd geëerd.

the English (non melodious verison) translation

William of Nassau
am I, of Duytschen blood.
Loyal to the fatherland
I will remain until I die.
A prince of Orange
am I, free and fearless.
The king of Spain
I have always honoured.

Duytschen probably just refers to the people (which just happens to be what Duits/Diets/Duuts/Dutch all mean), but it could refer to the fact that William the Silent was born in Dillenburg (his father was count of Nassau-Dillenburg), where he inherited the principality of Orange and the other possessions of the Nassau-Breda branch, which just inherited Orange and other possessions of the house of Chalons-Arlay.
Also until the 19th century Nederduits (or variants thereof) was at times used for Dutch and Low German (Neder, where the English Nether comes from or is related to, mean Lower).
 
I've seen an English verse from the 17th or 18th century that refers to "the Rotterdam Dutch, and the Potsdam Dutch, and the goddam Dutch"...

^_^
 
This seems like a simple matter of letting the right butterflies flap their wings. Germans being Dutch makes sense as a corruption of Deutsch.
 
Indeed, the narrowing of the word "Dutch" in English to mean solely the Netherlands was almost totally a result of the growing competition and hostility between England and the United Provinces in the 17th. Century. Seems like an easy fix, as all it would take would be for one or two printers to continue using "Dutch" in its etymologically-correct form to reverse such a trend towards the Netherlands, and result in "Dutch" remaining a referential term towards Continental Germanic peoples in a generic sense, possibly only narrowing towards the Germans with their demonym "Deutsch". Other than a couple words having different semantics, I'm not sure if any other notable butterflies would even erupt from such a shift in language terminology.

As for "Hollander = Netherlands citizen", that's nothing new in terms of Pars pro Toto, much how "Englander/Englisch" means all things generally British in German from time to time; not accurate, but most people would rather have an easy word for something like that based on convenience, not how factual it is.
 
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