Why some countries are Fatherland and some Motherlands

by KAPULAX2

i don't know if this is right place to ask? But why we call some countries Fatherlands like Finland and Serbia or Motherlands like Mother Russia?

Kochevnik81

Just a comment on Russia:

"Mother Russia" (there's a couple different variations of this in Russian) is a national personification of Russia, in the way that "Marianne" is a national personification of France, or Britannia is of Britain (an American equivalent might be "Lady Liberty").

This is a little different from the "motherland", which is maybe not the most accurate translation of the term "Rodina"(родина), which technically means something like "birthland".

But Russia also gets referred to in a fatherly sense in the term "otechestvo"(отечество) (ETA-thanks u/Mistogun7 for correcting my spelling!). The term for the Second World War in Russian is literally "The Great Fatherland War" - "Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voina"(Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́).

So Russia at least uses different personalized and impersonalized terms of differing genders.