Fatherland

[Peter Pedant]

what's the difference between a fatherland and a motherland - can you have both ?

This is a question from Another Person. I suggested that Germans have a fatherland and everyone else a mother land, but then I remembered that the Latin is patria.....Anyone got better ideas? Thanks

[jno]

apart from the Vaterland and Mother Russia I'm not sure most countries have either. Even if countries are personalised, like Uncle Sam and John Bull, Americans and Britons don't talks a lot about their fatherland; the French have la patrie, like the Romans' patria I guess, and la France and Marianne, but I don't know if they actually think of France as female.

[gomi]

Ah...but Winston Churchill often spoke of the Mother Country, meaning the country where white English-speaking colonials (including Americans) originated, but probably also to offer a feminized, softer alternative to Hitler's unbending, strict Fatherland.

[TWINKYGIRL76]

Has it got anything to do with the sex of the governing person, i.e Queen, king etc?

[Quizmonster]

There is no difference, both simpy meaning 'the land of origin' of whoever/whatever is being discussed. It has always been rare for British people to refer to their homeland in either form. British writers might produce ideas such as "Egypt, this motherland of superstition" (Shaftesbury 1711) or "The Dutch instead of our country say our fatherland" (Temple 1672).
So, saying it of foreigners and their lands is acceptable, but there is practically no record of Brits saying any such thing re Britain. In fact, the Temple quote appears to suggest that it would have been odd to do so 'way back then and - in my view - it still is.

[kaktus]

QM  My Danish-English dictionary claims that the term motherland is used when talking about colonies, do you have any idea if this is right? I know from expirience that the dictionary doesn't always get it right :0) 

BTW I don't know if this would be true for Dutch, but in Danish we have a term almost like fatherland, translated it would be fathers land  -  the land of your father.

[jno]

I think mother country in the Churchillian sense implies the country at the head of the British Empire, rather than just the homeland of people who live in Britain itself.

[Romeo]

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free.  On the other hand, there's Old Father Thames.