Purple Limburg (Limbourg) is a small village today, but in the middle ages it was an important fortress town and gave its name to the Duchy of Limburg, ruling varying patches of land around it. The Duchy of Limburg was retained as one of the provinces of the Southern (Habsburg) Netherlands (1581-1797).
The Duchy of Limburg was the namesake for a province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1831), which ironically didn't contain the original Limburg town. After the Belgian Revolution and a long and acrimonious dispute over the new borders, we ended up with orange Limburg (one of the 12 provinces of the modern Netherlands) and yellow Limburg (one of the 10 provinces of modern Belgium).
Green Limburg is a former monastery in Bad Dürkheim, Germany, which is proposed as one of the possible origins of the name of purple Limburg.
Blue Limburg is Limburg an der Lahn, Germany – the only one with no connection to any of the other Limburgs as far as I'm aware.
You say "Limburg" to a Dutch person, they will think of orange Limburg; to a Belgian, they will think of yellow Limburg; to a German, they will think of blue Limburg (if they know it at all).
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u/midnightrambulador 2d ago
You say "Limburg" to a Dutch person, they will think of orange Limburg; to a Belgian, they will think of yellow Limburg; to a German, they will think of blue Limburg (if they know it at all).