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The States-General of the Netherlands is the bicameral legislature of the Netherlands, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The parliament meets in at the Binnenhof in The Hague. The archaic Dutch word "staten" originally related to the feudal classes ("estates") in which medieval European societies were stratified (the clergy, the nobility and the commons). As in the United Kingdom the meaning of "the Commons" widened from just the social class, to the assembly in which those were represented; so in Dutch "staten" became to mean the political body in which the respective classes were (more or less) united. Dutch explorers named several places "Staten Island", a name that derives from the name of the parliament.
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