Dutch people

The Dutch are the people who live in the Netherlands, or those that come from the Netherlands. Often the Netherlands is called Holland, but this is only part of the Netherlands. The Dutch culture and ethnicity are also found outside of the Netherlands, with large number of Dutch living in the United States of America, South Africa, Suriname, and Namibia.

Many inventors were Dutch, including Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, said to have invented the microscope and the telescope. Many famous painters have also been Dutch, among them Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh and Johannes Vermeer.

The definition of ethnicity is not always clear. One can count all people living in the Netherlands as Dutch, but many are not. This is because many people who live in The Netherlands were not born there. About 15.5 million people in the Netherlands actually have the Dutch nationality. About 1 million people living in the Netherlands do not have the Dutch nationality. To make things more confusing, people who live in the other parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (including Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, and the Caribbean Netherlands) also have Dutch nationality. Still, even more people in the Netherlands who were not born there can also be called "Dutch". According to some definitions, also people who were born in the Netherlands, but whose parents were not, cannot be called Dutch. This definition leaves almost 20% of the entire Dutch population to be 'foreign'.