The less attractive ones I encounter are classified as BritSnots.
The people of Northern Ireland disagree among themselves whether they are British or Irish.
The people of the Republic of Ireland seem to have no interest in a demonym that would group them with the people of Great Britain.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is the closest we’ll get to a definitive answer for the OP.
I do think what is often forgotten amongst all the politically fraught debates on our relationships is that most Irish (Republic of) and British (of varying stripes) actually feel closely related and friendly at street level. Many of us are literally related.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This is GQ so… cite?
It’s not unadjacent to the North Atlantic though.
Water does have a tendency to slosh about a bit.
But the problem with the IONA concept (nowithstanding the cute reference to the holy island) is that there are other islands that have a better claim to the name - Iceland, the Faroes.
The main geographical feature that touches the English, Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish, Eire and even the Cornish and Manx, and which seems to be largely apolitical (I’m guessing) is the Irish Sea.
Perhaps something poetic could be engineered in one of the languages that meant, in effect, Irish Seasiders? We use Mediterranean as an adjective in the same way all the time. Coastal indigenous people in Australia sometimes refer to themselves as ‘saltwater people’ to emphasise commonality with others based around living by the sea.
Well, following that thought, you could replace the term “British Isles” with “Irish Isles” on the unimpeachable reasoning that all of the islands concerned are in or on the Irish Sea. And then “Irish” would be the obvious term for anyone from any of the Irish Isles. Who could possibly object?
More seriously, as already pointed out, if there were a real-world need for a one-word term for this group of people, such a term would already exist. There’s no word for people from countries that border the Irish sea for the same reason that there’s no word for people from countries that border the Adriatic Sea; they don’t have sufficient commonality for it to be useful to consider them as a coherent group very often. When the need does arise, “British and Irish” works well.
No, far more of Scotland directly faces the Atlantic than the Irish Sea. And as I say, “Eire” shouldn’t be used in the above sentence.
This is a bit of a nitpick. To many people ‘Ireland’ refers to the whole island of Ireland. Perhaps ROI (Republic of Ireland) is the more correct descriptor of the republic, but *‘Eire’ *is clear and unambiguous.
Dublin is indeed described as the capital of Ireland, but that says more about political ambition than geopolitical accuracy. And, of course, when the whole island was British, Dublin was the capital city.
No, it really isn’t a nitpick. You are wrong. You have also misunderstood what I said about Dublin. I referred to the “nation state whose capital is Dublin”, not the island. I was thus clearly referring to the Republic of Ireland, the “26 counties”; the point is that the official name of that nation state in English is “Ireland” irrespective of what happens in the rest of the island, or what you think.
Éire is Irish for Ireland. The two words have the same meaning.
On the show “Derry Girls,” at least one Catholic Northern Irishman refers to the Republic of Ireland as “the South.” Has the term “Southern Ireland” been used in such situations?
No I don’t believe so. I think there’s a strong political objection on the basis that Ireland is the nation as well as the island , it’s just that a bit has been lopped off it at the top. It would be a bit like, if England still held Calais, calling the rest of France ‘Southern France’.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Can nitpick on the Isle of Man there; that’s not part of the UK, it’s a Crown Dependency, and semi-independent, same as the Channel Islands - either all of the Crown Dependencies or none should be included. Then you get into British Overseas territories, uh, territory, as their residents are also British Citizens (now), and it all gets really confusing.
I think ‘British Islands and Ireland’ includes the entire archipelago without throwing stuff like Gibraltar in as well, but I’m not 100% sure.
Well… you had to go and open that whole can of worms, didn’t you.
In my opinion, if you were using “Britain and Ireland”, or “Ireland and Britain”, to refer to the geographical as opposed to constitutional entities, the Isle of Man would be included. However I do not believe the Channel Islands should be included. Geographically they are clearly part of the French landmass.
I just discovered that there’s a lengthy Wikipedia entry on what to call the British Isles – British Isles naming dispute - Wikipedia
These are the terms that the article mentions –
- Britain and Ireland
- Atlantic Archipelago
- Anglo-Celtic Isles
- British-Irish Isles
- Islands of the North Atlantic
- British Isles and Ireland
- Northwest European Archipelago
- West European isles
- Pretanic Isles/Pretannic Isles
- Insular ____?
- Saint Agnes Isles (naming the archipelago after its smallest inhabited island rather than its largest)
- Oceani Insulae/Islands of the Ocean
- Insulae Britannicae/Britannic Isles
- Western Islands
Several of these suffer from the same problem as “British Isles.” I mean, “Pretannic” is really just “Britannic,” which is really just “British.”
But, I think the archipelago, as a geographic feature, should have a name. The articles mentions that the Icelandic word translates as Western Lands, which is interesting given that the islands are Western from the perspective of the European continent, but eastern from the perspective of Iceland.
“Northwest European Archipelago” seems to be the most neutrally descriptive and accurate, but it’s a mouthful. I would prefer a name that doesn’t immediately devolve into an abbreviation, initialism, or acronym.
“North Sea-Atlantic Archipelago” is also similarly neutral and accurate, but is similarly unwieldy.
“Celtic Archipelago” seems pretty good to me, and it is historically sound. Sure, many current peoples of the islands aren’t of Celtic origin, but places are often named by their historic populations rather than their current populations, and the use of “Celtic” doesn’t threaten the legitimacy of the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, Norman French, Danes, Norwegians, etc.
Airstrip Oneans.
If I recall correctly, Airstrip One was just England. I think.
It’s unclear.