Editing Flanders (section)

=== Historical ===
{{Main|Terminology of the Low Countries#Flanders}}

The name originally applied to the ''[[ancien régime]]'' territory called the [[County of Flanders]], that existed from the 8th century (Latin ''Flandria'') until its absorption by the [[French First Republic]]. Until the 1600s, this county also extended over parts of what are now France and the Netherlands.

* In France, one of the historically Flemish regions is now in the [[Nord (French department)|Nord department]]. This is referred to as [[French Flanders]], and can be divided into two smaller regions: [[Walloon Flanders]] and [[Westhoek (region)|Maritime Flanders (Westhoek)]]. The first region was predominantly French-speaking already in the 1600s, the latter became so in the 20th century. The [[Lille|city of Lille]] identifies itself as "Flemish", and this is reflected, for instance, in the name of its local railway station [[TGV]] ''[[Gare de Lille Flandres|Lille Flandres]]''.
* The historically Flemish region which became part of the [[Dutch Republic]], now part of the Dutch province of [[Zeeland]], called [[Zeelandic Flanders]].

However, the term came to be used for a bigger territory, and this is critical to the evolution of modern terminology. Once the Counts of Flanders (who were also Dukes of Burgundy) expanded their regional power to create the bigger entity, now referred to by historians as the [[Burgundian Netherlands]], "Flanders", along with Latin "Belgium", were the first two common names to describe this regional block.<ref>{{Citation|last=Van Der Essen |first=Leon |title= Notre nom national |journal=Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire|volume= 4 |issue= 1| year= 1925| pages= 121–131| doi=10.3406/rbph.1925.6335| url=http://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1925_num_4_1_6335}}</ref> With the breakaway of the northern Netherlands in the [[early modern period]], the term Flanders continued to be associated with the whole southern part of the [[Low Countries]]—the [[Southern Netherlands|Southern]], [[Spanish Netherlands|Spanish]] or [[Austrian Netherlands]], which were the successors of the Burgundian state, and also predecessors of modern Belgium. The restriction of the term Flanders to the Germanic speaking part of the population occurred later.