High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Rotterdam (pronounced /?r?t?rdæm/; Dutch Nl-Rotterdam.ogg [r?t?r?d?m] (help·info); the Latinised adjectival form for the city is Roterodamus) is a city and municipality in the Dutch province of South Holland, situated in the west of the Netherlands. The municipality is the second largest in the country, with a population of 589,615 as of October 2009. It forms the southern part of the Randstad, the sixth-largest metropolitan area in Europe, with a population of 6.7 million. The port of Rotterdam is the largest in Europe. From 1962 to 2004, it was the world's busiest port. It was then superseded by Shanghai. Rotterdam is on the banks of the river Nieuwe Maas ('New Meuse'), one of the channels in the delta formed by the Rhine and Meuse rivers. The name Rotterdam derives from a dam in the Rotte river.