":The essence of what I want to get across is that, in the eariest records, words related to ""Britain"" (what I am calling cognates) referred to the archipelago. Later, around 325 BC when fresh contact was made with the inhabitants of these islands, words related to ""Britain"" came to refer to the larger island (which was previously been known by words related to ""Albion""). However (rightly or wrongly), it remained the habit of classical writers to refer to the entire archipelago by words similar to ""Britannic"" or the ""Britannias"" even after this fact. I think it is worth noting too that over time the word ""Britain"" would shift in meaning again. During the Roman occupation it would take on imperialist tones and later again it would refer to the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom, which again is not the same shape as either either the island previously known as Albion or the archipelago. 
 :Going through these not only shows how these islands came to be called ""Britannic"" but shows the complexity of the word ""Britain"". 
 :The sentences, I added (last night) were: 

  
 :In the earliest known uses, ancient Greek and Roman writers used cognates of Britain to refer to the archipelago as a whole, rather than to any one island in the group. 

  
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 :The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use among classical writers beginning around 325 BC, after which Britannia became the more common-place name for the island called Great Britain, rather than the archipelago as a whole. This was probably due as a result of contact between Greek travellers and natives of