What’s with the ‘Great’ in ‘Great’ Britain? Did all the Britons get together one day and say “You know what? This island is great! From now on we’re not going to just call it ‘Britain’; we’ll call it ‘Great Britain’!”
The seemingly related German word ‘Großbritannien’ with the word ‘groß’ (big) makes me think it has something to do with the archaic usage of the word ‘great’ meaning big. But was there a Kleinbritannien (Little Britain) that it needed to be differentiated from?
Yes, the region of Brittany (Bretagne) in northern France.
Yes, tt means “big” as in bigger than the British Isle.
A little history.
Not so, since Great Britain, the principal island in the archipalago often called the British Isles, is (obviously) smaller than the archipelago as a whole.
Everton has it right. It is to distinguish Great Britain from Brittany, in the north-west of France, or from Wales (which in Irish - and possibly other Goidelic languages? - is called “Little Britain”).
“Britain” is a term which has been used to describe - loosely - the lands principally occupied by the Britons, a Celtic people. As the land occupied by them has varied from time to time, the name has been applied to different territories at different times. Hence the development of variants like “Great Britain”.
I’m surprised nobody has linked to Cecil’s take. And the word “Briton” did not refer to a Celtic people, it refers to the Celtic pre-Germanic inhabitants of Britain. Mirriam-Webster gives this etymology:
This, of course, is the lesser known publication by the same people who bring you the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Really. :o
…and during later Georgian and early Victorian times there was a move to refer to Scotland as North Britain. Probably after the '45…
Understandably short-lived, although some regiments of the Army bore the title for a while.
It’s the same thing in French. You have Bretagne and Grande-Bretagne.
Besides, how could you build up patriotism and nationalism if you only called it “Pretty Good Britain”?
And here’s a little snippet of further info for you -
Many villages in Britain also have the suffix ‘Great’, and often there is a ‘Little’ nearby. For example near me there is a village called Great Ryburgh, and very close to it is a village (well, more of a hamlet) called Little Ryburgh.
Unfortunatly, not all Greats are bigger than their Littles, and they’re often quite far apart!
I’ve always thought it akin to the term greater, as in, for example, “The greater San Diego area” meaning the area of San Diego proper and the surrounding lands.
Folks used to use words different, dontcha know…
Palve said:
Why is “great” in this context archaic? Great=Grand=Big. “A great wind from the north” isn’t the same as saying “a neato wind from the north.”
But that would assume that there was a central, smaller region called Britain that was surrounded by other lands. Which there isn’t. We do abbreviate it to just “Britain” sometimes, but only in the same way that you abbreviate the US of A to “America”.
Just to add that the “little britain” (Britanny) wasn’t originally populated by Britons . They settled in/invaded this region, coming from Britania (now “Great Britain”) and fleeing the germanic invasions.
Ah, but maybe there was at one time. The Roman colony of Britannia included most of England (and Wales?), but not the far north of England, or any part of Scotland. Hence Great Britain can be thought of as an extended version of Britannia.
I take your point, but in examples like San Diego/greater San Diego area, both terms are used contemporaneously and mean different recognised places.
There are examples that follow the same principle here (Greater London, Greater Manchester), but there aren’t two places called “Britain” and “Great Britain” covering different areas. As territory was added by the Acts of Union, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were not added to an existing place called “Britain”.
I don’t think we should look for too much consistency here between the “Greater London” and “Great Britain” examples. It’s true that there was no political entitly called “Great Britain” until 1707, but the term was in use for at least a century earlier (James I and VI styled himself “King of Great Britain”) and as a geographical term it may well have predated even the union of crowns. Similarly although there was no political entitly called “Britain” from well before 1707, both Wales and Brittany were called “Britain” in other languages and conceivably also in English, and the term may have been used in a geographic or cultural sense.
Probably, though, its use to describe the union of crowns, and later the union of kingdoms, was driven by a desire to emphasise the importance of the new political entity - something larger than the sum of its parts, something which had never existed before, a usage of “Britain” which was different from all the preceding or then current usages.