England is one of the constituent countries of the UK.
The UK is the name of the sovereign state, properly it’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain is the name of the island itself, on which sit England, Scotland and Wales.
The British Isles is the geographic area that includes Ireland, the UK, Isle of Man, Jersey etc.
Of course. But then I’m from NI originally and have lived in Dublin, Glasgow, London and currently reside in the Midlands, so wasn’t exactly a challenge. But I’m guessing the quiz wasn’t for me!
BTW, the Isle of Man and Channel Islands are not actually an official part of the UK, so the notes in the OP are incorrect.
Got 'em all, but I’m a professional geographer, so maybe I don’t count.
And I dispute that the Channel Islands (you mentioned Jersey) are part of the British Isles. Since “British Isles” (like “Great Britain”) is a physical entity and not a political one, the Channel Islands are just some islands off the coast of France, IMHO. If you’re going to include “distant* pieces of land politically connected to the sovereign state which comprises most, but not all, of the land area of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland” in your definition of “British Isles” (but why would you?), then you’d better add Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, for starters.
(*“Distant” here including “much closer to some unrelated sovereign state” – in this case, France.)
Just IMHO, mind you!
ETA: Ninja’d! Although I WOULD include “Man” as a British Isle. (Actually, I was only Ninja’d if Aro meant to write “British Isles” and not “UK”)
It is more of a nebulous term compared to the others (and I know some Irish don’t like Ireland being called part of the ‘British Isles’ because…anyway), I went off the wiki where I got the map from. Geographically I guess it doesn’t make much sense, but Jersey calls itself part of the British Isles too, and I didn’t want to piss them off along with the Irish.
I should have written “much closer to some unrelated land mass,” the better to emphasize the point of the British Isles bring a physical entity (a “formal region,” in classic geography parlance.)
Sorry to keep up this tangent (I know this thread is about what the general public KNOWS or not, not about definitions), but I must remark on the irony of this. I can see why citizens of the Republic of Ireland would object to being included in anything containing the word “England” (land of the Germanic Angles) or “kingdom” (duh), but “Britain,” as far as I know, more or less evokes the Celtic culture which dominated the British Isles until the Romans arrived (and was pretty strong for quite a while after that) – a Celtic culture of which the Irish are generally proud to represent much of what remains today.
No need to answer my question – I get how “Britain” and “UK” have become commingled in peoples’ minds for a long time, hence the objection of some Irish to be included in the term “British Isles”. Please ignore me and carry on with the real point of this thread.
I knew all except the “British Isles” since it sounded like something the tourist bureau would have dreamed up to lure unsuspecting tourists to the Shetlands.
It’s a mistake to treat Celtic culture as a monolith - the Brythonic Celts were different from the Irish Celts, as in, they spoke a different branch of the Insular Celtic language family. Britons had more in common with people in Brittany than they did with the Irish Irish are Celtic, but they were never British.
Wow-I’m an idiot, but my crime is the inability to read and posting in a hurry. I’d totally read that as saying IOM and Jersey as being in the UK, so apologise for confusing the whole thing. Not the start a thread like this needed!
I knew all this, but let’s be clear: I didn’t know all this until only a couple years ago. That’s when I made a friend in Ireland (The Republic of Ireland) and my husband then talked about his cousins in Northern Ireland. And that’s when I finally decided to figure out once and for all what’s up with the names. It wasn’t covered in school and otherwise I probably wouldn’t have found out for many more years.
If you don’t think you’ll ever get to travel to a place, it’s difficult to motivate yourself to learn the exact geography.
Ah, thanks. Still, I doubt any Irish objections have much to do with Brittonic Celts vs. Goidelic Celts, but rather with the commingling I alluded to above, which they correctly see as existing in many people’s minds – something which IS relevant to this thread.
Don’t feel too bad. In the run-up to the recent referendum, I heard a BBC announcer talking about Scotland voting to “leave Great Britain” which would be quite a trick.
