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From: Dr M M Gilchrist <>
Subject: Re: Terminology: British, English, & c
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 17:14:33 +0100


Dear Brian,
>Perhaps there's another aspect to this too. You have geographically
>the British Isles which consists of 'Little Britain' (which is
>present day the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) and 'Great
>Britain (being England, Wales, and Scotland), being the names first
>given to the area by an early Greek astronomer around 300 A.D.

Uh-oh.
'Little Britain' was a name later given to the part of mainland Gaul
resettled by Britons from the Western part of the mainland in the Dark
Ages. It is now known in English as 'Brittany', in Breton as 'Breizh' and
French as 'Bretagne', as distinguished from the British mainland, 'Grand
Bretagne'.
Ireland has nothing to do with it.

>BUT that won't sit well with many Irish and Scots - because of
>politics and nationalism. And even in Northern Ireland several
>hundred thousand of the residents will say they are 'British' and not
>'Irish'. It is thus difficult to generalize and complicated by
>politics and history.

I should point out that I am a third-generation SNP member, but 20C
politics doesn't - or SHOULDN'T - mean rewriting the 18C, when, indeed, for
a time it was attempted to make the labels 'North Britain' and 'South
Britain' fashionable as an alternative for 'Scotland' and 'England'. It
never really caught on in England.
Also, although the countries around the Baltic are now separate, it is
still valid to use 'Scandinavian' as an umbrella term referring to Norway,
Denmark and Sweden, without implying anything political. In the same way, I
don't have a problem with 'British' as an umbrella term.

A nice irony is that the Ulstermen who insist they are British (and cling
to concepts of Empire and Britishness which the mainland has outgrown) are
the same so-called 'Scotch-Irish' who were keen not to be British in
America!
Cheers,
Doc M

Dr. M. M. Gilchrist

The Silver Whistle: http://www.silverwhistle.free-online.co.uk/
The Website of the 18th Century

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