Leo Belgicus

The Leo Belgicus (Latin for Belgic Lion) was used in both heraldry and map design to symbolize the Low Countries (current day Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium) with the shape of a lion.

The names derived from the Belgae (and thus including ) are now mostly identified with the country Belgium; yet before the division of the Low Countries into a southern and a northern half in the 16th century, it was a common name for the entire Low Countries, and was the usual Latin translation of the Netherlands (which at that point covered the current territory of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and a small part of northern France). Several somewhat later maps of the Dutch Republic, which consisted of the Northern Netherlands, and therefore has almost no intersection with the present country of Belgium, also show the Latin title Belgium Foederatum. Also the a 17th-century colonial province that was located on the East Coast of North America - which was ruled and settled exclusively by the Dutch Republic and in which the present Belgium had no share - was known in Dutch as Nieuw-Nederland but in Latin as Nova Belgica or Novum Belgium.

The earliest Leo Belgicus was drawn by the Austrian cartographer Michaël Eytzinger in 1583, when the Netherlands were fighting the Eighty Years' War for independence. The motif was inspired by the heraldic figure of the lion, occurring in the coats of arms of several of the Netherlands, namely: Brabant, Flanders, Frisia, Guelders, Hainaut, Holland, Limburg, Luxembourg, Namur and Zeeland, as well as in those of William of Orange.

...
Wikipedia