So, Mayor Guiliani was knighted, but the AP reported that he cannot rightly be called “Sir Rudolph”, but why?. Also, it said that over 200 “Britons” were killed in the 9/11 attack. I thought that the term Briton is considered archaic. Just asking, but whenever I hear the word Briton, it is usually used to refer to a British person in the Dark Ages. Plz inform me!
Thanks,
Some folk may think we still live in the dark ages but I like to think that we have some history behind us.
Heck we still run markets whose charters go back to ‘time immemorial’ which is anything that can be proven to be ongoing before 1140AD.
I have a relative who survived 1066. Does that count for anything?
The formal position is that a Knight is expected to express fealty to the monarch. A British subject can do this, but a non-British subject couldn’t and shouldn’t. Same reason that I never said the Pledge of Allegiance in High School- I was British and did not feel allegiance to it.
However, an honorary knighthood is offered to non-Brits- which allows them to place the appropriate letters (usually KBE- Knight of the British Empire) after their names.
Load of tosh really!
And Briton does usually mean ancient-Briton. Brits seems to do except when used by Irish people when it tends to have echoes of (dirty, nation robbing, murderous) Brits. Or increasingly use of the appropriate historic nationalities (Scot, Welsh, English and Irish/Ulsterman)seems more common now than fifty years ago.
And BTW if he wanted to call himself Sir Rudolph, he could, but it would not be a privilege granted by the Queen. Bob Geldof (of the Boomtown Rats and Band Aid) is Irish and was knighted and is popularly referred to as Sir Bob, but never as Sir Robert (or Bob) Geldoff.
And in reply to Doug Bowe, I assume that I have relatives that survived 1066- probably about a million of them, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
History is bunk and heritage doubly so. 
that is correct you have to be British to call y/self Sir.
the word Briton is used occasionally in present day terms. i never use it but some people do.
Briton is used sometimes as a variant on British e.g.
“More than 200 Britons died”
“More than 200 British died”
I guess if you are not confident that “British” can be used a a noun you might use “Britons” to be on the safe side.
Its just a useful catch all for the residents of the British Isles and presumably NI, since we all have the same passport. I’m down as a British citizen, I don’t know if natives of NI get the same classification or not.
Whether or not “Britons” is an odd term, using “England” to refer to the UK (as in “English Dopers”; aren’t the rest of us expected to know about our national affairs?) is plain wrong.
I’m quite happy to refer to myself as a Briton - probably happier with that than “Brit”, in fact. I wouldn’t use the term to refer to a native of either Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland, though; to my mind, it refers to natives of Great Britain, not the British Isles as a whole. (Great Britain being, roughly speaking, the big sort-of-triangular island on the right, which makes up most of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which covers most of the British Isles. There have been threads on these topics before…)
As the UK casualties in the WTC may well have included people who would not have considered themselves English, referring to them in this context as anything other than ‘Britons’ would have been at best insensitive and at worst offensive.
‘British’ is an adjective, except in the phrase ‘the British’.
Pjen is correct about the fealty problem. In the case of American citizens, there is also the long-standing objection to them taking foreign titles. (My own view is that it would have been more resonant for Guiliani to have been offered the freedom of the City of London - while they may indeed be a ‘load of tosh’, it is at such moments that symbolic gestures of this sort, including honorary knighthoods, have some use.)
http://www.ukpa.gov.uk/_6_eligibility/6_who_is.htm (Uk passport agency):
British Citizen
People became British citizens on 1 January 1983 if they were citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies on 31 December 1982 and had the right of abode in the United Kingdom on that date.
I’m guessing that therefore if you are from Northen Ireland you have “British Citizen” in your passport as well.
Aside:
I have a tendency to really piss off my relatives from Scotland when announcing that I am British. I was born in England and I have an English accent. However, my mother is from Scotland with Irish heritage. My Father is from England with Scottish heritage. As far as I can see I am not English, but I am also not Irish or Scottish, so I must be British. My passport seems to say this as well. Those Scottish relatives don’t half get annoyed - they only hear my English accent and make a decision from that.
As someone who was born in Wales, with English, Scottish and Irish ancestry, I’m in the same boat as amanset. Yes, I sound English, but I am British.
How come that there so many people living in England who claim they are Scottish because they have Scottish roots? I have never heard of a Scotsman claiming to be English on the grounds that his great grandfather or something had once come from South of the border.
Sorry about this casdave, but I had often wondered about the meaning of time immemorial until I checked it via two sources. Here’s Brewer on the subject:
Time Immemorial: Since ancient times, beyond memory. In English law, beyond ‘legal memory’, i.e. before the reign of Richard I (1189-1199), because the Statute of Westminster of 1275 fixed this reign as the time limit for bringing certain types of action.
Whoa! Can of worms there, methinks.
FTR, I’m English, and happily so (i.e. on Canadian/US embarkation forms I’m definitely English, as opposed to British). I’m equally happy for people of Scots descent to be proudly Scottish etc etc. Why not?
Even “Britons” may well have caused offence in one case - that of Sean Canavan of County Tyrone. The Sun’s list of British and Irish victims included him in the former category.
Not that The Sun is known for its sensitive approach to such complexities.