The inhabitants of the British colonies scattered all over the world speak of Britain as the "mother country," "Mother England"; and R. H. Stoddard, the American poet, calls her "our Mother's Mother." The French of Canada term France over-sea "la mère patrie" (mother fatherland).
Even Livy, the Roman historian, wrote _terra quam matrem appellamus_,--"the land we call mother,"--and Virgil speaks of Apollo's native Delos as _Delum maternum_. But for all this, the proud Roman called his native land, not after his mother, but after his father, _patria_; so also in corresponding terms the Greek, [Greek: _patris_], etc. But the latter remembered his mother also, as the word _metropolis_, which we have inherited, shows. [Greek: _Maetropolis_] had the meanings: "mother-state" (whence daughter-colonies went forth); "a chief city, a capital, metropolis; one's mother-city, or mother-country." In English, _metropolis_ has been associated with "mother-church," for a _metropolis_ or a _metropolitan_ city, was long one which was the seat of a bishopric.
Among the ancient Greeks the Cretans were remarkable for saying not [Greek: _patris_] (father-land), but [Greek: _maetris_] (mother-land), by which name also the Messenians called their native land. Some light upon the loss of "mother-words" in ancient Greece may be shed from the legend which tells that when the question came whether the new town was to be named after Athene or Poseidon, all the women voted for the former, carrying the day by a single vote, whereupon Poseidon, in anger, sent a flood, and the men, determining to punish their wives, deprived them of the power of voting, and decided that thereafter children were not to be named after their mothers (115. 235).
In Gothic, we meet with a curious term for "native land, home," _gabaurths_ (from _gabairan_ "to bear"), which signifies also "birth." As an exemplification of the idea in the Sophoclean phrase "all-nourishing earth," we find that at an earlier stage in the history of our own English tongue _erd_ (cognate with our _earth_) signified "native land," a remembrance of that view of savage and uncivilized peoples in which _earth, land_ are "native country," for these are, in the true sense of the term, _Landesleute, homines_.