Terminology of the British Isles

Below is a visual reference guide to some of the main concepts and territories described in this article:

• 
  The British Isles
• 
  The British Islands
• 
  The United Kingdom
• 
  Great Britain (island)
• 
  Ireland (island)
• 
  England
• 
  Scotland
• 
  Wales
• 
  Republic of Ireland
• 
  Northern Ireland
• 
  The Isle of Man
• 
  The Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey)

A British passport

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official full title of the state. This name appears on official documentation such as British passports. For convenience, the name is usually shortened to United Kingdom, UK or Britain.[7][18]

The United Kingdom is a sovereign state. Its four constituent countries are sometimes considered to be of different status. This view may be supported by the existence of devolved governments with different levels of power in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (see Asymmetrical federalism).

Wales is also often erroneously[21] described as a principality of the United Kingdom. The title of Prince of Wales is usually given to the heir apparent to the British throne but it has no political or other role in respect of Wales. The International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) has defined Wales as a "country" rather than a "principality" since 2011, following a recommendation by the British Standards Institute and the Welsh Government.[22]

Northern Ireland is sometimes described by United Kingdom citizens as a province of the United Kingdom, which derives from the Irish province of Ulster, of which Northern Ireland is a part. Northern Ireland also had, until 1972, a far greater degree of self-government than the other constituent parts of the UK.

Great Britain is both a geographical and a political entity. Geographically, it is one island, but as a political entity it also includes the smaller offshore islands that are administered as part of its constituent nations – England, Wales and Scotland – such as England's Isle of Wight, Wales' Anglesey and Scotland's Inner Hebrides, Outer Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.

The abbreviation GB is sometimes officially used for the United Kingdom, for example in the Olympics, or as the vehicle registration plate country identification code for UK-registered cars (see also British car number plates). SCO in Scotland, CYM for Wales (Cymru), NI for Northern Ireland, or ENG for England can also be used.[23]

The internet code .gb, although allocated to the UK, is virtually unused and UK web domains use .uk.

The four constituent parts of the UK are also known, particularly in sporting contexts, as Home Nations or the "Four Nations". The BBC refers to its UK-wide broadcasting operation as Nations and Regions [24] ("regions" referring to geographic regions of England. Thus the naming conventions tend towards describing distinct regions or nations which exist within a single sovereign state.

In sport, the home nations mostly have their own separate national teams – England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, for example in football. Sporting contests between the Four Nations are known as "Home internationals" (an example is the British Home Championship in football).

The governing body for football in Northern Ireland is called the Irish Football Association (the IFA), having been in existence since some forty years before Partition. Its counterpart in the Republic (plus Derry City FC) is the Football Association of Ireland (the FAI). The Northern Ireland national team retained the name "Ireland" for some fifty years after partition. Since around 1970 the two teams have been consistently referred to as "Northern Ireland" and "Republic of Ireland" respectively. The UK competes as Great Britain at the Olympic Games. According to the Olympic Charter the Olympic Council of Ireland represents the entire island of Ireland.[25] Olympic athletes from Northern Ireland may choose whether to represent the UK or the Republic of Ireland.

Since the Good Friday Agreement and the subsequent implementation legislation, sporting organisation (and several other organisations, e.g. tourism, Irish Gaelic and Ulster Scots language boards) on the island of Ireland has increasingly been cross-border.

Citizens of the UK are called British, Britons, Brits, (colloquial) or Britisher (archaic). The term Unionists may also be used, sometimes pejoratively, for example by supporters of Scottish independence when referring to supporters of the Union. Some older slang names for Britons are Tommy (for British soldiers) and Anglo. Anglo properly refers only to England, but it is sometimes used as a broader reference as an element in compound adjectives: for example, "Anglo-French relations" may be used in newspaper articles when referring to relations between the political entities France and the United Kingdom. Anglo-Saxon may be used (particularly in Continental European languages) when referring to the whole English-speaking world.

An Irish passport

Since the adoption of the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, Ireland has been the English name of the state which covers approximately five-sixths of the island of Ireland. The name Éire is used when writing in Irish.

Since the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, the term "Republic of Ireland" is the term used as the additional description of the state. This term is useful in avoiding ambiguity between the name of the island and the name of the state. However, the term "Ireland" is always used in formal diplomatic contexts such as the European Union or the United Nations. The passport of the Republic of Ireland bears the name Éire – Ireland.

Before the introduction of the 1937 constitution and the new name, the Irish Free State occupied the same territory as the modern state of Ireland. The Irish Free State became an autonomous dominion of the British Empire in 1922 when it seceded from the United Kingdom through the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The King ceased to be its Head of State in 1936 and the state ceased to be a Dominion and left the Commonwealth in 1948.

Traditionally, the island of Ireland is divided into four provinces – Leinster, Connacht, Munster and Ulster, with each of the provinces further divided into counties. The Republic of Ireland takes up 83% of the island, twenty-six of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. Northern Ireland takes up the remaining area, six of the traditional nine counties of Ulster.

On the island of Ireland the naming of places often raises political issues. The usage of "Ireland" as the official name of the state causes offence to some Unionists in Northern Ireland, who believe it implies that the state still has a territorial claim to the whole island – the terminology of "Republic of Ireland" or "Éire" is much preferred by Northern Irish unionists when referring to that political state. Similarly, some Nationalists in Northern Ireland also prefer to reserve the usage of "Ireland" to refer to the whole island.

In Northern Ireland, Irishness is a highly contested identity, with fundamentally different perceptions of national identity between unionists (who generally perceive themselves as being British) and nationalists (who generally consider both communities to be part of the Irish nation).[26]

The Republic of Ireland is often referred to by the Nationalist and Republican communities by the term "the Twenty-six Counties", with the connotation that the state constituted as such forms only a portion of the ideal political unit of the Irish Republic, which would consist of all of the thirty-two counties into which the island is divided. The term "the Six Counties" (of Northern Ireland) is also used. Other Nationalist terms in use include "the North of Ireland" and "the North". These latter are terms also used by the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. More extreme terms for Northern Ireland include "the occupied six counties" or "occupied Ireland", which are often used by people who reject the idea of Northern Ireland as a separate entity from the Republic of Ireland.

The Irish passport is available to Irish citizens and can also be applied for abroad through Irish Consular services and the local Irish Embassy. As per the Irish nationality law, any person born on the island of Ireland before 2005, or otherwise a first generation descendant of such a person, is allowed to apply for an Irish passport. As such, people born in Northern Ireland and their children may be Irish citizens and hold an Irish passport if they choose.

A Jersey passport

Under the Interpretation Act 1978 of the United Kingdom, the legal term British Islands (as opposed to the geographical term British Isles) refers to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, together with the Crown dependencies: the Bailiwicks of Jersey and of Guernsey (which in turn includes the smaller islands of Alderney, Herm and Sark) in the Channel Islands; and the Isle of Man.

Special British passports are issued to citizens of the Crown dependencies. On the front of passports issued to residents of the Crown dependencies, the words "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" are replaced with "British Islands" followed by the name of the issuing state or island. This design applies to Jersey passport, Guernsey passport and Isle of Man passport. Pre-Brexit, Crown dependency also bore the title "European Union" for border control purposes, like British passports. Crown dependency citizens who have no family ties to the United Kingdom were granted a special limited 'Islander Status' under EU law (article 6 of Protocol 3 in the Treaty of Accession of the UK to the European Community).[27][28]

Roman Britain in 410

Caesar's invasions of Britain brought descriptions of the peoples of what he called Britannia pars interior, "inland Britain", in 55 BC. Throughout Book 4 of his Geography, Strabo is consistent in spelling the island Britain (transliterated) as Prettanikē; he uses the terms Prettans or Brettans loosely to refer to the islands as a group – a common generalisation used by classical geographers. For example, in Geography 2.1.18, …οι νοτιώτατοι των Βρεττανών βορειότεροι τούτων εισίν ("…the most southern of the Brettans are further north than this").[34] He was writing around AD 10, although the earliest surviving copy of his work dates from the 6th century. Pliny the Elder writing around AD 70 uses a Latin version of the same terminology in section 4.102 of his Naturalis Historia. He writes of Great Britain: Albion ipsi nomen fuit, cum Britanniae vocarentur omnes de quibus mox paulo dicemus. ("Albion was its own name, when all [the islands] were called the Britannias; I will speak of them in a moment"). In the following section, 4.103, Pliny enumerates the islands he considers to make up the Britannias, listing Great Britain, Ireland, and many smaller islands. In his Geography written in the mid 2nd century and probably describing the position around AD 100,[32] Ptolemy includes both Great Britain (Albion) and Ireland (Iwernia) in the so called Bretanic island group. He entitles Book II, Chapter 1 of as Iwernia, Bretanic Island, and Chapter 2 as Alwion [sic], Bretanic Island.[35]

The name Albion for Great Britain fell from favour, and the island was described in Greek as Πρεττανία or Βρεττανία, in Latin Britannia, an inhabitant as Βρεττανός, Britannus, with the adjective Βρεττανικός, Britannicus, equating to "British".[29] With the Roman conquest of Britain the name Britannia was used for the province of Roman Britain. The Emperor Claudius was honoured with the agnomen Britannicus as if he were the conqueror, and coins were struck from AD 46 inscribed DE BRITAN, DE BRITANN, DE BRITANNI, or DE BRITANNIS. With the visit of Hadrian in AD 121 coins introduced a female figure with the label BRITANNIA as a personification or goddess of the place. These and later Roman coins introduced the seated figure of Britannia which would be reintroduced in the 17th century.[36]

In the later years of Roman rule Britons who left Latin inscriptions, both at home and elsewhere in the Empire, often described themselves as Brittanus or Britto, and where describing their citizenship gave it as cives of a British tribe or of a patria (homeland) of Britannia, not Roma.[29] From the 4th century, many Britons migrated from Roman Britain across the English Channel and founded Brittany.

Map of Great Britain with part of Ireland in 802

Hereford Mappa Mundi with the isles in the lower left hand corner.

While Latin remained the language of learning, from the early mediaeval period records begin to appear in native languages. The earliest indigenous source to use a collective term for the archipelago is the Life of Saint Columba, a hagiography recording the missionary activities of the sixth century Irish monk Saint Columba among the peoples of what is now Scotland. It was written in the late seventh century by Adomnán of Iona, an Irish monk living on the Inner Hebridean island. The collective term for the archipelago used within this work is Oceani Insulae meaning "Islands of the Ocean" (Book 2, 46 in the Sharpe edition = Book 2, 47 in Reeves edition), it is used sparingly and no Priteni-derived collective reference is made.

Another early native source to use a collective term is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum of Bede written in the early eighth century. The collective term for the archipelago used within this work is insularum meaning "islands" (Book 1, 8) and it too is used sparingly. He stated that Britain "studies and confesses one and the same knowledge of the highest truth in the tongues of five nations, namely the Angles, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Latins", distinguishing between the Brythonic languages of the "ancient Britons" or Old Welsh speakers and other language groups.[37]

Brythonic, Saxon and Viking kingdoms such as Strathclyde, Wessex, and Jórvík amalgamated, leading to the formation of Scotland, and England. Wales was sometimes united under princes or kings such as Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. Between 854 and 1171, a kingship of Ireland was established by kings of the regional kingdoms such as Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid, Toirdelbach Ua Briain, Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, and Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, something not achieved in Britain until 1707. In subsequent Norman Ireland, local lords gained considerable autonomy from the Lordship of Ireland until it became the Kingdom of Ireland under direct English rule.

The 1654 Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, Insulae Albion Et Hibernia

Abraham Ortelius makes clear his understanding that England, Scotland and Ireland were politically separate in 1570 by the full title of his map: Angliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae, sive Britannicar. insularum descriptio ('A representation of England, Scotland and Ireland, or the Britannic islands'). George Lily's 1546 map divides Britain into the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, with Ireland alongside. Some maps from this period also appear to mark Wales, and sometimes Cornwall, as separate areas within Britain, while the history of England created by Polydore Vergil[38] for Henry VIII states, "The whole country of Britain is divided into four parts, whereof the one is inhabited by Englishmen, the other of Scots, the third Welshmen and the fourth of Cornish people."[39][40]

Maps of the Mediaeval, Renaissance and later periods often referred to Albion. This archaic term was originally used by Ptolemy and Pliny to mean the island of Great Britain. In later centuries its meaning changed to refer only to the area we now call Scotland (Albany, or Alba in Gaelic). Albion has survived as a poetic name for Britain but it is not in everyday use.

A 1726 map showing "The north part of Great Britain called Scotland"

Following the Acts of Union 1707, a fashion arose, particularly in Scotland, for referring to Scotland as North Britain, while England was sometimes dubbed South Britain. These terms gained in popularity during the 19th century. The most lasting example of this usage was in the name of the North British Railway, which became part of the London and North Eastern Railway in 1923, and in the name of the North British Hotel in Edinburgh, opened by the North British Railway in 1902, which retained the name until it reopened in 1991 as The Balmoral.

A timeline of states in the British Isles. (Ireland continues to exist, but the description "Republic of Ireland" is used as a disambiguator in this case).

The diagram on the right gives an indication of the further evolution of kingdoms and states. In 1603 the Scottish King James VI inherited the English throne as "James I of England". He styled himself as King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, although both kingdoms on Great Britain retained their sovereignty and independent parliaments, the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England.[41] (The term "Great Britain" in English itself dates from Middle English as early as c. 1338, a translation of 12th-century Medieval Latin: Britannia maior and Anglo-Norman: Bretannie maiur or grant Bretaigne and derived from Ptolemy's Geography.)[41]

The 1707 Act of Union united England and Scotland in the Kingdom of Great Britain under the Parliament of Great Britain, then in 1800 Ireland was brought under British government control by the Act of Union creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Irish unrest culminated in the Irish War of Independence and the 1922 separation of the Irish Free State, which later became a republic with the name Ireland. The majority Protestant northeast continued to be part of what became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

British overseas territories such as Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands have various relationships with the UK. The Commonwealth of Nations, initially formalised in 1931 (the British Commonwealth until 1949), is an association of independent states roughly corresponding to the former British Empire. (This has no connection with the Commonwealth of England, a short-lived republic replacing the previous kingdoms during the English Interregnum (1649–1660).)

The dictionary definition of British Isles is that it is a geographical term that refers to the whole of Ireland and Great Britain as well as the surrounding islands. It is sometimes incorrectly used as if identical to the UK; or to refer to Great Britain and the surrounding islands, excluding the island of Ireland entirely.[45][46][47] The BBC and The Times have style guides that mandate the dictionary definition but occasional misuse can be found on their web sites.[48][49]

The term British Isles can also be considered irritating or offensive by some[50] on the grounds that the modern association of the term British with the United Kingdom makes its application to Ireland inappropriate.

The term British Isles can also be considered to imply a proprietary title on the entire archipelago.[51]

The policy of the government of Ireland is that no branch of government should use the term,[52] and although it is on occasion used in a geographical sense in Irish parliamentary debates, this is often done in a way that excludes the Republic of Ireland. In October 2006, The Times quoted a spokesman for the Irish Embassy in London as saying that they would discourage its use.[53]

During a stop-over visit to the Republic of Ireland in 1989, the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, indicated that he assumed Ireland's head of state was Queen Elizabeth II, given that she was the British Queen and his officials said that Ireland was a part of the British Isles.[54]

In Northern Ireland, some nationalists reject the term and instead use these islands, these isles or "Britain and Ireland" as an alternative.[55]

There have been several suggestions for replacements for the term British Isles. Although there is no single accepted replacement, the terms Great Britain and Ireland, The British Isles and Ireland and Britain and Ireland are all used.

A still from the 1943 US propaganda film series Why We Fight, which suggests that the name "England" applies to the whole of Great Britain

The word "England" is often used synecdochically to refer to Great Britain—or the United Kingdom as a whole[56][57]—which often causes offence, particularly to those from the non-English parts of Britain. In a similar way, references to England as an island,[58] to an "English passport",[59] or to Scottish or Welsh places as being in England[59][60] are examples of this usage of the term "England".

Because of the offence likely to be taken by Scots, Welsh and Irish at this usage, most politicians and official figures have avoided this usage since the early 20th century. However, there are frequent examples of this usage from earlier times.[61][62][63] For a long time it was common for fans of the England football team to wave the British Union Flag—with the use of the specifically English St George's Cross flag only gaining popularity at the Euro 96 tournament.[59]

The colloquial usage of "England" as a synonym for "Britain" is still widespread outside the UK. In Germany, the term "England" is often used to mean Great Britain or even the entire United Kingdom. In many other languages, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean, the word for "English" is synonymous with "British"—see the article on Alternative words for British for more detail.

The term "Europe" may be used in one of several different contexts by British and Irish people: either to refer to the whole of the European continent, to refer to only to Mainland Europe, sometimes called "continental Europe" or simply "the Continent" by some people in the archipelago. Europe may also be used in reference to the European Union (or, historically, to the European Economic Community). A comedic treatment of the different uses of this word appears in an episode of the BBC sitcom To the Manor Born. When tradesmen are taking measurements in metric, and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton objects on the grounds that the house was built "in feet and inches", a tradesman says "We're in Europe now", referring to the European Economic Community. Audrey fforbes-Hamilton retorts "Well you may be, but I'm staying here!" - implying that to her, the word "Europe" referred only to mainland Europe, excluding Britain and Ireland.

The word "Great" means "larger", in comparison with Brittany in modern-day France. One historical term for the peninsula in France that largely corresponds to the modern French province is Lesser or Little Britain. That region was settled by many British immigrants during the period of Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain, and named "Little Britain" by them. The French term "Bretagne" now refers to the French "Little Britain", not to the British "Great Britain", which in French is called Grande-Bretagne. In classical times, the Graeco-Roman geographer Ptolemy in his Almagest also called the larger island megale Brettania (great Britain). At that time, it was in contrast to the smaller island of Ireland, which he called mikra Brettania (little Britain).[64] In his later work Geography, Ptolemy refers to Great Britain as Albion and to Ireland as Iwernia. These "new" names were likely to have been the native names for the islands at the time. The earlier names, in contrast, were likely to have been coined before direct contact with local peoples was made.[65]

The word Britain is ambiguous, being used variously to mean Great Britain,[66][67][68] the United Kingdom,[69][68] and for some, England.[70] Use of Britain can be contentious, with many people in Northern Ireland objecting to its application to their province.[71] While some organisations including the BBC and British Government prefer to use Britain as shorthand for Great Britain,[72][73] others prefer, where precision is not required, to use Britain to mean the United Kingdom.[74][75]

The word Ireland has two meanings.

1. It is the official name of the state that occupies five sixths of the island, in Irish law 'described' as "the Republic of Ireland".
2. It is a geographical term for the whole island, which may be referred to as "the island of Ireland" to avoid ambiguity.

The traditional province of Ulster on the island of Ireland, showing the modern-day border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

The terminology and usage of the name Ulster in Irish and British culture varies. Many within the unionist community[76] and much of the press refer to Northern Ireland as Ulster – whereas the nationalist community refer to the traditional Irish province of Ulster, which is a nine-county entity that incorporates the three counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan (which are in the Republic) along with the counties of Armagh, Antrim, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone in Northern Ireland.

Thus, the word Ulster has two usages:

1. It is the name of one of the four Provinces of Ireland, consisting of the nine northern counties of the island, that was partitioned between the United Kingdom (six counties) and the Republic of Ireland (three counties).
2. It is an alternative name for Northern Ireland, used by many in the Unionist community. It consists of the six north-eastern counties of the island that remain part of the United Kingdom.

The Isle of Man and the two bailiwicks of the Channel Islands are Crown dependencies; that is, non-sovereign nations, self-governing but whose sovereignty is held by the British Crown. They control their own internal affairs, but not their defence or foreign relations. They are not part of the United Kingdom or part of the European Union.

• The Isle of Man is part of the British Isles, situated in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland.
• The Channel Islands consist politically of two self-governing bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey. They are the remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, which was once in personal union with the Kingdom of England. They are sometimes, despite their location next to mainland France, considered part of the British Isles. This usage is political rather than geographic.
• The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are British Islands in United Kingdom law.

There are five Celtic languages in current use in the region. Each has names for the islands and countries of the British Isles. They are divided into two branches:

• Brythonic – which includes Welsh and Cornish
• Goidelic – which includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx

Some of the above are:

The English word Welsh is from a common Germanic root meaning "Romanised foreigner" (cognate with Wallonia and Wallachia, and also cognate with the word used in Mediaeval German to refer to the French and Italians).[77]

The English names Albion and Albany are related to Alba and used poetically for either England or Scotland, or the whole island of Great Britain.

English Erin is a poetic name for Ireland derived from Éire (or rather, from its dative form Éirinn).

In Irish, the term Oileáin Bhriotanacha is a translation of the English term British Isles. Another translation is Oileáin Bhreataineacha, which was used in the 1937 translation from English to Irish of a 1931 geography book.[78]

Earlier dictionaries[79] give Oileáin Iarthair Eorpa as the translation, literally meaning West European Isles. Today the most common term Éire agus an Bhreatain Mhór is used, meaning, literally, Ireland and Great Britain, as provided by terminological dictionaries.[80]