"British Isles"

didn't really know/hadn't thought about the history of the name 'british isles' until it came up on the literature thread, and so honestly wouldn't have thought twice about using it before now. would've assumed it had an older, geographical basis which it kind of does with the ancient greek 'pretanic isles'. but, i understand the objection. all the other names are a bit shit tho and aesthetics do count. plain old 'britain and ireland' seems acceptable tho?

britain and ireland much preferred

but british isles is forgiveable as purely geographical descriptor

Northwest-European archipelago sounds too cool tbh

write-in for the arthurian mystic vibe of "western isles"

voted 'england'

"british isles and ireland" is like that reported incident of mandela being referred to as a prominent african-american

This thread caused me to ponder and discover the curious etymology of archipelago:

https://www.haggardhawks.com/single-post/2015/06/24/Archipelago

Read the introduction to Norman Davies's The Isles for a historian's take on this problem, there's a clue in the title to his solution. I probably use "British isles" in convo with people who don't care, but anybody who claims that it's a neutral unproblematic name is a liar before God.

Sometimes the long-winded route is necessary

its a hell of a lot better than being included in the UK fwiw

'real england' option sorely missing. As is Albion tbh:

Judging from Avienus's Ora Maritima to which it is considered to have served as a source, the Massaliote Periplus (originally written in the 6th century BC, translated by Avienus at the end of the 4th century), does not use the name Britannia; instead it speaks of nēsos Iernōn kai Albiōnōn "the islands of the Iernians and the Albiones".

Islands of the Iernians and the Albiones, I like the sound of that.

"Britain and Ireland" obviously the best answer, and not only because there are probably six old sods on the Isle of Man who would be angry about it.

manxious

write-in for the arthurian mystic vibe of "western isles"

Already used for the Outer Hebrides. Britain and Ireland is good enough for me.

I am fond of the japanese term 'home islands'. shakespeare/boyle have given us 'isles of wonder' which seems v apt in its shitness

morelike isles of yonder amirite

Putting the wonder back into Isles of Wonder.

I bitterly call them the irish isles and spit every time

Isles of chunder

"east achill" does the job imo

the shite isles

cleanup in isle sea

brexitannia and the womp

isles of wondering why the fuck you had to be born in such a grim, grimy and monochrome joyless shithole!

vg tracer

isle of everything

just "The Isles". who tf is going to stop us?

The Isles of Man

the shite isles

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, August 16, 2018 5:28 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

their band photo belongs in the oasis swagger daft bands thread

the nandos archipelago

Silly Isles.

Dear, old, blighted.

Literal translations of Chinese names for European countries https://t.co/j4PFp7o31X pic.twitter.com/bLo2lNdO0x

— OnlMaps (@onlmaps) August 14, 2018

Braveland and Moral-land indeed!

lmao at "Moral-land"

China is better than Europe, wish they'd hurry up and take over

https://theneedleblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/capture31.png

Brave Orchid Isles would be pretty sweet, who do we write to?

Belgium is Billytime, surely they mean Northern Ireland?

Boaty McBoat Isles has a mandate from the citizens of these countries and we must honour that

'Britain and Ireland' if I'm talking about the land masses as countries, but I probably would unthinkingly use 'British Isles' for the land masses as land masses. Bad practice though imo, even if it isn't intended to be colonialist it still has that resonance.

'British Isles and Ireland' is just terrible and wrong, though.

That's what I thought but there's no reason to bracket the two together - the British Isles is a good description of Great Britain and it's surrounding islands, and Ireland is a good description of, er, Ireland.

We have you surrounded!

British Isles and Ireland will annoy Arlene Foster one way or another, so it's got that going for it.

Risible Shits (anag)

"cleanup in isle sea" is too perfect, kudos

like that reported incident of mandela being referred to as a prominent african-american

still 'fondly' remember Entertainment Tonight circa 1995 making a big fuss about Star Trek's "first African-American Vulcan."

Risible Shits (anag)

Excellent. Good name for a band too.

Although I detected the presence of a tongue in the vicinity of a cheek, I chose to vote this straight: Britain and Ireland. Ireland is not a possession of nor appendage to Britain.

the six counties could be the bits SI relish i spose

xp britain and ireland merely lists the countries and therefore as a descriptor of the combined feature is objectionably redundant imo

Must they be combined is the question.

Exactly. There's no collective name for, I don't know, Corsica and Sardinia... or is there?

aoelian?

No, they're further south.

i think the closeness and shared cultural history of the islands as a geographic feature does in fact lend itself to a suitable descriptor tbh

Literal translations of Chinese names for European countries https://t.co/j4PFp7o31X pic.twitter.com/bLo2lNdO0x
— OnlMaps (@onlmaps) August 14, 2018

Braveland and Moral-land indeed!

― calzino, Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:58 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha! I made that map. Seriously. An hour messing around with my wife a few years back.

props :)

that's awesome

The English Premiership Isles

xp etc It's easily the most popular thing I've ever done, projects I've spent *years* on get about 5% of the traffic of that one post

There are a couple of bits that are wrong - Sweden and Switzerland are the wrong way round for a start, but that sort of works as a joke because Chinese people are always confusing the two.

On topic - I did some "Introduction to British culture, history, history of the English language" lectures for a group of visiting Chinese students this week and used "British Isles" - not thought about it a great deal before, but not sure if any of the alternatives really work. I do like to point out that "Great ____" or "Greater ____" is a normal name to give to the largest island in an archipelago, but does this imply that Ireland is "Lesser Britain" or "Britain Minor"? Hope nobody went away with that impression.
I do think we really need to do something about the underrepresentation of Ireland and Irish history in the British educational system, this works as both a symptom of this problem and something that feeds into it. Though maybe the solution is just for Scotland and Wales to hurry up and gain independence.

heh

i think that the increased inclusion of Ireland and Irish history in a British curriculum would be seen as a more reclamative/hearkening back to empire step than the use of british isles tbph

it's essential british kids are taught about the irish so they can recognize the warning signs.

seriously tho, an unflinching look at empire and its legacy is prob the most important thing kids could be taught and while i don't know for sure i would guess they are being failed enormously in this regard

I do like to point out that "Great ____" or "Greater ____" is a normal name to give to the largest island in an archipelago, but does this imply that Ireland is "Lesser Britain" or "Britain Minor"?

Brittany is Lesser Britain. So some people say.

More than two decades ago now, but it wasn't really taught at all in my high school aside from mentioning "home rule" as being a hot political topic of the Edwardian & late Victorian eras, but that meant as much to us as the Corn Laws. Especially odd as I went to a weird state Catholic secondary school named after one of the English Martyrs, where we were taught that we were a persecuted minority, not allowed to raise money for Oxfam (had to be Cafod, Oxfam fund abortions!), not allowed to do bonfire night because Guy Fawkes was a martyr framed by the state, etc. Half of the kids (including me) seemed to have some sort of Irish ancestry, but still Ireland was basically never mentioned in the whole five years.

I doubt that the Gove era of education has changed any of this.

I think my nephew goes to the school you are talking about!

I don't think I learnt anything about Ireland at school but I didn't do history GCSE and although my history teacher in 3rd year was head of the history dept he was a fucking awful teacher and we were way behind the syllabus. Everyone in other sets were doing WWII and we were still on the industrial revolution

tbf you are 16 here before you learn anything about irish history

everything I knew I learned from Yeats' poems in english class, not history.

Where's the 'Miserable Damp Fucking Shithole' option?

Was singing "James Connolly" before I could walk etc.

Have had English peeps justify colonialism to my by saying with pained sincerity: but they’re called the *british* isles DO YOU SEE, as of the term isn’t itself a colonial dick punch.

Bleedin' Saxons.

I know it's been gnawed over ad infinitum, but seriously, the idea of an education which leaves you unable to draw your only land border..

Art education has been the pits for decades it's true.

tbf there is a lot of history to cover and I don't think I could come up with a curriculum for 3 hrs a week for years 7-9 that wouldn't leave ppl with huge gaps in their understanding of the country & world. history was one of the best-taught subjects at my school and in the late 90s/early 00s we did the industrial revolution, the first world war, the norman conquest, shi huangdi & early china, the french revolution & napoleon, the civil war, and for gcse due to an anomaly with the history syllabus at that time we almost exclusively did 1918-39 for 2 years, which was great. I'm be tempted to say doing one period in detail is better than skipping over lots of other stuff, but the more I learn abt history the tougher & more absurd the idea of coming up with some basic crib-sheet version that will sort the kids out seems.

I really love condensed histories and overviews, and the single volume world history is mb my favourite format of book, but it's bc of how working on such a big scale reveals the contours, peculiarities and particulars of one perspective, not bc they are in any sense definitive. braudel's history of civilizations was initially intended to be an overview for the equivalent of a-level students in france, and if you really wanted ppl to have some outline of everthing you'd need to adopt its thrillingly-light-on-detail style, and that probably wouldn't include land borders

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Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

you can't refer to a group of over 6000 things as x & x

The Britains and Ireland.

sure we're all things like

you want to name it, beat the brits imo

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51i44PfMk%2BL.jpg
I've not got around to reading this yet, but apparently Edgerton says the British Nation ceased to be in the 70's, as it realigned itself as part of the EU. Which might make him sound a bit like Nigel Lawson, but apparently he is a much deeper thinker than that.

Greece is just called Greece, if you want to talk about the Greek islands you talk about the, er, Greek islands.