Foreigners should call us “Sir” nevertheless.
Just to show I’m not making this up:
It’s not a matter of “a small idea of the world around us.” It’s simply that defining “the continents” is an arbitrary exercise and some people have defined them differently from others.
I’m having trouble parsing this, because the full and proper name for “GB” is “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
Can you please clarify?
Incidentally, in answer to the OP, I would therefore call a subject of the U.K. a UKoGBaNI-ite, pronounced OO-koh-guh-bah-nee-ite.
Kinda rolls off the tongue, no? 
What’s the parsing problem? Other than that you give a definition of Great Britain which itself includes Great Britain and something else? You sort of answered your own question there: UK = GB + NI.
I assumed that you were using “GB” as synonymous with “UK” – which was a wrong assumption on my part.
My confusion arose because many people **DO ** consider these terms as synonymous, perhaps because the UK uses the international foreign vehicle identification code of GB. So, at least on the rears of motor vehicles, GB=UK.
(And I must add, the number of people making the GB=UK connection is much greater among people who do **not ** live on those two European ( ) islands off of the coast of France.)
Great Britain was the name for the union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England. The Kingdom of England had already entirely consumed the Principlaity of Wales and hence the Kingdom of England included Wales. Ireland was a separate country under domination of England at first than Great Britain. Then Ireland was added to the Kingdom, so we became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. When Ireland became independent (slowly between 1917 and 1948) we became the United kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Technically the short name for our country in ‘Britain’ which is defined as Great Britain and Noerthern Ireland. But Great Britain refers only to Scotland and Ireland.
All of the above ignores the Channel islands and Isle of Man!
Simple eh?
We wish!
Wikipedia has a rather long entry just on the terminology alone, complete with a Venn diagram!
Nope, GB=GB, which is the area covered by the DVLA. Northern Ireland vehicles are administered separately, by the DVLNI, and so a UK identification would be ambiguous.
Yes, I’m nitpicky 
You mean a GB one.
Nitpicktastic!
But, of course, vehicles from NI carry a GB plate.
It’s all just so simple.
No, I mean a UK one, because it could refer to either the DVLA or DVLNI, whereas GB only refers to Swansea. I know my nitpicks!
Don’t they carry NIRL ones?
Oh I see what you mean, just about. Shit, even I’m confused now.
No. No such thing. GB plate I’m afraid.
Just so simple.
GB applies to the whole UK.
Lots of Northern Irish people have an NI bumper sticker, presumably for when they travel abroad… they then confuse the continentals who think they’re Nigerians or Nicaraguans or something!
My family always put an IRL sticker on the car…my father preferred that people know we weren’t British.
Although British and Northern Irish number plates looks similar (white on the front, yellow on the back) the letter/number codes are different, with Northern Ireland having three letters and then four numbers, corresponding to the county (county codes change with time) and the registration number while Britian has two letters, two numbers and then three letters, corresponding to the area where the car was registered, when it was registered and the exact registration.
e.g
Northern Irish plate: LBZ 1234
British Plate: YC 51 JHA
The Republic of Ireland has the most sensible coding of all. Two digits for the year of registration, one or two letters for the county and then the registration number.
e.g. the 1234th car registered in Galway in 2003 will have the registration 03 G 1234
OK, fair enough, the official identifier for Northern Ireland is GB. However, two things from your own link:
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‘GB’ dates from 1910, when it applied to the whole of the UK, including all of Ireland. So while the modern application of it to Northern Ireland is nonsensical, this is just because it predates any British sensitivity about such matters, and indeed predates the existence of the artifical province.
-
“There are other, unofficial codes in common use…Some license plates even tell us from which part of the country they are originating from”
For examples of non-official usage in Northern Ireland, take a look here: Olav's British number plates. Page 7. License plates of the United Kingdom
Is “Brit” OK?
A NI plate is a ‘vanity plate’ like ‘Alba’ or Ecosse for Scotland. The official plate required to be legal for a NI registered car is a GB plate. An EI plate would be incorrect and illegal, though might make a political point.
However, International plates are rarely enforced and most police in European countries would recognize a plate for what it was, even without an international identifier.
I would be reluctant to drive a car with the wrong identifier in a country where the police nitpick and look for ‘contibutions’ to overlook minor offences.
Well, the noun is ‘Briton’
I was under the impression that there was a cross-Europe (either EU, EEA or some other grouping) agreement that rendered international identifiers redundant. I may be wrong.
And it parallels the GB team in the Olympics which may or may not show sensitivity. Is that nonsensical.
I have nothing against vanity plates, but here we are talking official usage, nationality and formal identification. If we look at NI from a Personal National Identifciation Perspective, there will be no clear answer at all!
Only for plates that conform to the European standard with the blue flash and the national identifier.
You may note that, for political reasons, the NI plates currently issued to not comply with these standards.
To confuse matters further, NI and Old EI indices may be used under the UK registration scheme in some circumstances!
You will see English owned cars with TZ777 or IG 999 registered with the DVLI. The indices would have historically belonged to NI and EI, but if reregistered in the appropriate time span then become DVLI indices. Many people use NI indices to hide the age of vehicles- especially buses and hire cars as NI indices are cheaper tha old English/Scottish/Welsh ones.