Thread: Happy Birthday, Union Jack

Originally Posted by TATY

This is why it is annoying when you see websites (99% of the time American) that list countries and have United Kingdom and Scotland listen seperately.

Great Britain technically isn't a country, it's just the mainland of the UK.

And people in Wales, Scotland and NI get pissed off if you refer to the UK as England.

If I'm referring to the political actions of the country, I call it the UK. If I'm referring to England, Scotland, and Wales, I say Britain, though I most often refer to "England" in a historical context. "Ireland" refers to all the Irelands, because we Americans don't give a damn about them as individuals, as we only know that they wear green and drink Guinness.

Originally Posted by BlackMage

Originally Posted by TATY

This is why it is annoying when you see websites (99% of the time American) that list countries and have United Kingdom and Scotland listen seperately.

Great Britain technically isn't a country, it's just the mainland of the UK.

And people in Wales, Scotland and NI get pissed off if you refer to the UK as England.

If I'm referring to the political actions of the country, I call it the UK. If I'm referring to England, Scotland, and Wales, I say Britain, though I most often refer to "England" in a historical context. "Ireland" refers to all the Irelands, because we Americans don't give a damn about them as individuals, as we only know that they wear green and drink Guinness.

Ireland really is the whole Island of Ireland which is the Republic (Eire) and Norther Ireland, so referring to the whole thing as Ireland is fine.

You can calso call Northern Irish people Irish. Depending on their leanings they may prefer British (the protestants) or Irish (the Catholics).

To be honest a LOT of people in the UK don't even fully know the difference between the UK, GB, England, Scotland, Wales.

Also there is the British Isles with is a geographical name referring to the the UK + Ireland and the Islands surrounding. In Ireland they don't really like this name since it suggests Britain still owns Ireland, but at the time the naming of the area came about the whole thing was British.

It's sort of the the USSR and Russia. Since Russia was by far the biggest entity and the centre of power of the Soviet Union, in the West people would often call the USSR, "Russia", or refer to all Soviets as Russians.

Since England is the biggest (not by a large margin in area, but in terms of population it is by far), and London is in England, people will tend to refer to the whole country as England.

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