UK, Britain, England | What’s with all the names?

There’s often a good deal of confusion about how best to describe that collection of islands which sit, a little awkwardly, off the coast of northern Europe, between the Atlantic and the North Sea. Britain, England, the British Isles, the United Kingdom, Great Britain…In some ways, this is hardly surprising. While there are two main islands, they are surrounded by hundreds of smaller landmasses, some of which have close political and cultural links to Britain and Ireland, and some which exist much more independently. Because of the political diversity and often because of the difficult political history (as well as some strained contemporary relationships), terminology matters and it matters a great deal in different ways to different people.

The two main islands which stand at the centre of what’s been described as the ‘North Atlantic archipelago’ are Britain and Ireland. Some may want to describe these collectively as well as the surrounding islands – Shetland, Orkney, the Hebrides, the Isles of Man, Wight, and Mull and the very many more which sit off the coastlines – as the British Isles. However, for very good reasons, many of those who do not reside in Britain, and especially many of those who live in Ireland do not consider themselves in any sense as ‘British’. And just what it means to be ‘British’ is a vexed question more broadly in the 21^st century given that Scottish independence remains a priority for many ‘north of the Border’, and when Brexit has reopened some of the old wounds that scarred Northern Ireland. History and politics matter, then, as much as geography.

Visitors to the United Kingdom often think of themselves as coming to a very old country and in some ways they’re quite right. They are, of course, coming to a collection of old countries: Wales, Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland. But they’re also coming to a state which has existed in its current form for less than a century.

We have evidence of a first king of Scots in the 9^th century, and the first king of the English in 927. Henry II of England took the title lord of Ireland in 1170, and Edward I conquered Wales around 1300. However, it was only in 1603 that a union, of sorts, took place between England and Scotland and even then, although James Stuart ruled both kingdoms, he ruled them as separate states. It was only in 1707 that the United Kingdom came into being, when a formal political union between England and Scotland meant that the parliament in Edinburgh closed and all political representatives gathered together in London. In 1801, Ireland was added to the collective, but the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, existed for little more than a century. The island of Ireland was annexed in 1922 to create the Irish Free State, later recognised as the Republic of Ireland, while the six counties of Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. This state of affairs was recognised formally in 1927, and so the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was born.

Recently, the political map of the UK has become more complicated still. In 1998, Scotland regained the parliament it lost in 1707 and Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) have responsibility for a wide range of Scottish issues. Similarly a Welsh Assembly now sits in Cardiff, and there is a Northern Irish Assembly at Stormont near Belfast. The development of this body was hugely significant in bringing some sort of an end to ‘The Troubles’ which blighted Northern Ireland for thirty years from the late 1960s. What this means, of course, is that, on many issues, the UK no longer speaks with a single political voice. Often the governments in control in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast have very different agendas and political priorities than that which sits in London. Given all this diversity and uncertainty, perhaps it’s not surprising that many are worried about the future of this less-than-United Kingdom and many more are just a bit uncertain what we should call it.

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