Quoting /u/Searocksandtrees from a thread 22 days ago

hi! more input is welcome; meanwhile get started on these previous discussions

• Why are some countries popularly depicted referring to their country as the "motherland" (eg Russia) and others as the "fatherland" (eg Germany)?

• Why did Russians in WW2 refer to Russia as the motherland? And why did the Germans refer to Germany as the fatherland in WW2?

• Why are some countries referred to as male or female? When/where did this arise?

more examples

• Fatherland vs. Motherland

The summary of several answers is: Both the term Motherland and Fatherland have been used in both countries, however often with political connotations. Fatherland in Germany has a distinct militaristic connotation to it and Motherland in Russia has a distinct political connotation to it! The threads linked, as well as the others that have been archived, delve into this with much more depth.

To further complicate the question, my understanding is that in Swedish they use fosterlandet which translates to "land that raised a person."

In Russian, the words for homeland ("rodina"), land ("zemlia"), and Russia ("Rossia") are all feminine nouns. Because the nouns are engendered, it is much more natural to say "mother Russia" or "mother land" than "father Russia" or "father land."

In Russian language whenever a noun ends (there are exceptions) on a or ya (а, я), its gender is feminine. People translate the word rodina (родина) as motherland probably due to its gender and Rossiya is feminine as well (also ends on the letter a), Father Russia (отец Россия) makes no sense whatsoever for any Russian speaker. Motherland is actually not a very good translation, the word rod (in this case it's also the root of the word rodina) can mean family, kin, "by birth", origin. Rodina means birthplace, in other words, though birthplace in English carries no political connotations, as far as I'm aware of, whereas rodina does to a certain extent.

And actually, there is a word otechestvo (отечество), of a neutral gender, comes from the word otets (отец, literally father), it translates quite well as fatherland. It is a more, um, "political" word than rodina. Though it is used commonly to denote any product that was manufactured in Russia, such a product would be called otechestvenniy (отечественный, "of the fatherland") and that has no "political" connotations despite the translation (simply a synonym of "made in Russia").

Source: I'm a native Russian speaker.

Also, if you ever notice a Russian person inflecting the words incorrectly with regards to gender when speaking a foreign language - this is the reason. If the words ends on a consonant - it's masculine, on a, ya - feminine, on e, o - neutral, on the letter ь (softens the consonant sound at the end of a word) - could be either masculine or feminine. The exceptions for these "rules" are often ignored or disregarded (willingly or by ignorance) by Russians themselves. The word kofe (кофе) is masculine, despite the fact that one instinctively feels that it is neutral since it ends on the letter e and it w, the disregard of this exception is so widespread that recently the ministry of education actually passed a law (that included some other things as well), officially making it acceptable to use kofe both as masculine and as neutral gender. Obviously, the decision was ridiculed, but it is a good anecdote for showing just how important and basic is the gender of the nouns in the Russian language.