I’m guessing something to do with carnal relations with ovines.
This surprises me from someone from Australia. It’s generally regarded as derogatory, although these days mostly used jocularly. In any case, it generally refers to English or other British people, and not to Irish.
I think that there is confusion here. British is a common descriptor for people from England, Scotland (including the Orkneys, Shetland and the other islands), Wales, The Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. Irish describes people from Eire which is a totally separate independent country.
Of course, the Island of Ireland is divided into Eire and Northern Ireland as anyone who has been following the Brexit shenanigans will know.
Yeah AFAIK Pommy [Bastard, etc] is 90% an Aussie term for people from England (though as was said, not typically a serious insult nowadays) rather than including people from Scotland or Wales, and it 100% does not include people from Eire.
Again a common Australian term for Australians of ethnic heritage in either Britain or Ireland is ‘Anglo-Celtic’.
But I don’t think there is a single term anywhere that specifically refers to people who are current residents/citizens of either Eire or the UK: you just need to name both those countries if you’re referring to both of their residents/citizens.
There is however, ambiguity with respect to Northern Ireland. The people there are British, in the sense of being citizens of the UK, and also Irish, in the sense of being, well, Irish.
There’s also plenty of ambiguity within the UK generally. IME people from England are much likely to be insistent that foreigners refer to people from non-English parts of the UK as ‘British’ compared to the people themselves in those places. A lot or even most people in those other places will say they are Scottish, Irish, Welsh first. Without necessarily supporting removing their countries from the UK, but a large number want that also. Besides being an active debate in Scotland, recent polls in NI have had slight pluralities or majorities either way on continuing to be in the UK v unification with Eire. And as is well know that question in NI tends to fall along lines of religious background. Northern Irish of Catholic background IME are not likely to answer ‘British’ if you ask their nationality, more likely ‘Irish’. They don’t mistakenly believe they live in Eire or even necessarily want unification with Eire. They just interpret the question as ‘what ethnic nation do you belong to?’ not ‘what country are you a citizen of currently?’. Of course similar ambiguity exists plenty of places in the world.
+1.
Try calling a Israeli Jew (unless you time travel to 1947) a Palestinian.
This is far from unique. A Mexican immigrant in Texas will have the same dilemma if asked their nationality. People move between countries and borders change, leaving ambiguities which can last for many generations.
Of course there is a strong minority in Northern Ireland that want to unify the island, that is one of the root causes of the “troubles”. Borders are an artificial construct after all and frequently take little or no account of the feelings of the indigenous populations.
Try asking a local in Alsace what nationality they are.
Well just as quote quoted I said that kind of ambiguity isn’t unique to the UK. However the identification of an immigrant with their former country isn’t really the same thing. In case of the UK you have countries, ‘nations’…united in a kingdom, for centuries. But there’s a general tendency in recent times for the original nations (Scotland, Ireland etc) to become once again stronger sources of identity. And also as I referred, look up recent results, some polls now in NI have a slight majority saying they want to unify with Eire, Brexit being a factor in that, not just the previous sectarian minority. Though other polls put it at still only plurality in favor of unification, or even plurality in favor of UK and anyway an actual referendum wouldn’t necessarily come out like a poll. As in Scotland.
When I said similar situations elsewhere I was thinking of more actually similar ones like regional separatism in Spain, where similarly regions long ago unified/conquered under one ‘nation’, Spain’, now once again tend to see themselves as eg. Catalonian rather than Spanish. Rather than just individual immigrants the world over who naturally have some sense of being more than one thing, at least for some time.
Blinks
You mean you think ‘Pom’ really WAS the word he was so assiduously avoiding?
On a board on which ratfucker, assgasket, mofo, crap turd are totally acceptable words to use in a post, I find this…odd. Even in its full form (“Whingeing Pommie Bastard”) I’m sure Dopers aren’t about to need the smelling salts.
Next up: I hear White Americans have occasionally been insulted with a word that sounds a little like ‘honey’ - but I’ll avoid posting it here 
They may well be understanding the question as “what country are your a citizen of?”, and answering it with"Irish". People born in Northern Ireland are generally entitled to both Irish citizenship and British citizenship, and may identify as Irish, or British, or both. The Good Friday Agreement between the UK and Ireland affirms their right to identify as they wish, and to have that identification accepted and respected.
To answer the OP, there is no word for “a denizen of either Great Britain or Ireland, but we are not specifying which”. The concept does not have enough meaningful real-world applications to have made such a term necessary, so none has developed.
No, it was just the word you used. I didn’t think it made a lot of sense even as a joke.
I really don’t know what you’re on about, since I said the word was mostly used jocularly these days. And if you were to direct those other words at members of specific ethnic groups, they could be moderated.
Probably a good idea, since it’s totally irrelevant to the GQ question at hand.
A lot of Irish people would resent Ireland being considered part of the “British Isles”, even though the usage is correct.
I believe I’ve heard people use the term “these islands” to try and avoid being contentious.
“These islands” or, simply, “Britain and Ireland”.
There was a brief attempt in the 1980s to popularise the term “Islands of the North Atlantic”, handily abbreviated to “IONA”, to refer to Great Britain, Ireland and their various offshore islands but it never really caught on (not least because Great Britain is not actually in the North Atlantic).
No, and neither (as far as I can tell) does anyone else refer to them as British. The Oxford English Dictionary, which is usually pretty good at describing how people use terms, indicates that the word “British” includes Ireland only in the phrase “British Isles”. By itself, as a demonym, it refers only to Great Britain, specifically excluding all of Ireland. (Though maybe this isn’t quite correct, as I seem to recall hearing about Northern unionists who present themselves as both “Irish” and “British”.)
The term “Irish” also describes people from Northern Ireland, which is generally recognized to be part of the UK.
Well I’m English and don’t recognise this assertion in the slightest. I can’t recall EVER insisting ‘foreigners’ call my Welsh wife British. (She, on the other hand, will happily refer to herself as either).
I know plenty of Protestant N. Irelanders who also call themselves ‘Irish’, as it’s a matter of fact.
British is a purely political term, not even a terribly old one. We are all aware that we are both ‘name a country’, and British. It’s entirely individual preference what we use, and making sweeping statements like’ The English Do This’ and ‘The Scottish Do That’ is a fool’s game. Many of us aren’t even that consistent about it, depending on where we are and who we’re talking to.
‘British’ is used to refer to all of the United Kingdom, even if it isn’t literally correct. Hence ‘British Government’, ‘British Prime Minister’ etc. Basically because we don’t have a better term (UKian?)
Northern Irish residents are entirely at liberty to call themselves either ‘Irish’, ‘British’ and both, depending on their personal preference and confirmed by the Good Friday Agreement.
This usage is completely wrong, and I believe many Irish people would find it problematic to say the least.
When you are speaking English, the official name of the nation state whose capital is Dublin is “Ireland”. If you need to clarify, you can say “Republic of Ireland”, but that is not the official name.
“Éire” is just the Irish Gaelic word for “Ireland”, in any context. Using it when you’re speaking English doesn’t make any more sense than it would if you referred to Germany as “Deutschland” in a conversation in English. The word appears on Irish stamps because they are written in Irish.