Is there a simple term that refers to all residents of the (2 large and many small) islands, regardless of political/national identities (British, Irish, English/Welsh/Scottish, etc?)
British
A opposed to English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh.
So people from the Republic of Ireland refer to themselves as “British”?
I didn’t think that was the case…
I would go with British Islanders. It makes it clear you’re talking about the geographic region rather than any particular ethnicity.
That invention doesn’t make anything clear - nobody would know what you were talking about.
I don’t think there is any term in common use for people of both the U.K. and Ireland. “British” certainly refers to people of the U.K. only. The best you might do is to spell it out as “people of the British Isles”, I suppose. But note also that use of the term “British Isles” to refer to the U.K. & Ireland is disfavored in Ireland.
Although I see that might be a problem. Apparently the term British Islands has a different meaning than the British Isles.
The British Isles refers to the landmasses. But the British Islands is a term used in British law to refer to the portion of the British Isles that are part of the United Kingdom. So the Republic of Ireland is part of the British Isles but not the British Islands.
There is no specific demonym for a person who lives on an isle as opposed to an island. (Although searching for one led to the discovery that a person from the Isle of Wight is inexplicably called a Vectian and a person from the Isle of Jura is a Diurach.) So I’m stumped.
Atlantic Archipelagians.
The only thing I can think of is “British and Irish”. “British Islanders” is not a term I’ve heard used and could be confusing as between people who live on any of the islands around us, and those who live on the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, which are locally self-governing and therefore there may (depending on context) be a legal distinction.
Nice try, but there are plenty of other islands in other jurisdictions up, down and across the North and South Atlantic.
People from the Common Travel Area
Common Travel Area?
I guess CeTAceans would work, especially for people from Wales!
Referring to Irishmen as British wil, in many cases, lead to at minimum a verbal beatdown. I naively made the mistake many years ago with an Irish friend if mine and I’d never seen him so upset before or since.
There is no common single way to refer to everyone on the islands. You’re best off finding out which country they’re
from, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, or Ireland and using their home nation.
Saying ‘Britain and Ireland’ is about as short as you can make it without causing Trouble.
There isn’t such a term, at least not one that would be properly understood by everyone, and inventing one now also seems liable to misunderstanding.
Toffy-nosed gits?
There’s a similar situation over here with North Americans. I mean, yeah, there’s “North American”, but I don’t think it’s normally taken to include the whole of the continent. For example, there have been dozens of stories lately about Prince Harry and Meghan ‘splitting their time between England and North America,’ but does any imagine that possibly they’ll be setting up households in Mexico or Honduras?
‘Anglo-Celtic’ is a pretty common term in Australia, not for people ‘from’ the British Isles as in ever necessarily lived there themselves, but whose ancestry is (mainly) from there and who once represented a large majority of the population, a relatively slight majority now. As opposed to Australians who are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants from other parts of Europe or Asia, or indigenous people.
An Irish-American pal told me he didn’t learn that “FuckingEnglish” wasn’t two words until he was 12.
“I don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers.”
When I lived in Thailand, I knew some Aussies and Kiwis who had an overall term or two to refer to them. I don’t think I’ll repeat those here.
I didn’t know “Pom” was so controversial