Brits: why do you call England "Blighty?"

My parents used to call each other “Blick” as an ironic term of endearment, and maintained that it was short for “blighter”. Perhaps only for them it was…

Either way, there’s a delicious self-mocking in the word. Whether an Englishman calls his homeland a “Foreign” or a “Blighted” place, there’s a built-in joke. It’s charming.

Wrong, they were building a two-storey house one time and decide to “bung a low roof on it”, hence the name.