this was confusing me...

so I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Holland

I thought that it was being used interchangeably to refer to The Netherlands and it often is. Also throwing me off all these years is the word 'Dutch.' Are the Dutch from Holland? From the Netherlands? Let me get this straight then - the Netherlands equals Holland and the people are Dutch, right? Well, the Wikipedia entry sheds some light on this (Holland refers to a region in the western part of the Netherlands, but is also informally used to refer to the entire country; the people of Holland are referred to as Hollanders; there are Dutch provinces called North Holland and South Holland; and so on). At least it's as complicated as I thought it was and my confusion was warranted!