Welcome to the United Kingdom (and a Whole Lot More) explained by me, C. G. P. Grey.
United Kingdom? England? Great Britain?
Are these three the same place? Are they different places?
Do British people secretly laugh those who use the terms incorrectly? Who knows the answers to these questions?
I do, and I'm going to tell you right now.
For the lost — this is the world, this is the European continent, and this is the place we have to untangle.
The area shown in purple is the United Kingdom.
Part of the confusion is that the United Kingdom is not a single country, but is instead is a country of countries.
It contains, inside of it — four, co-equal, and sovereign nations.
The first of these is England, shown here in red.
England is often confused with the United Kingdom, as a whole, because it's the largest and
most populous of the nations, and contains the de facto capital city, London.
To the north is Scotland, shown in blue, and to the west is Wales, shown in white,
and — often forgotten even by those who live in the United Kingdom — is Northern Ireland, shown in orange.
Each country has a local term for the population.
While you can call them all 'British,' it's not recommended; as the four countries generally don't like each other.
The Northern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh regard the English as slave-driving, colonial masters
(no matter that all three have their own, devolved, Parliaments; and are allowed to vote on English laws despite the reverse not being true),
and the English generally regard the rest as rural, yokels who spend too much time with their sheep.
However, as the four constituent countries don't have their own passports,
they're all British citizens, like it or not. They are British citizens of the United Kingdom,
whose full name, by the way, is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
So where's Great Britain hiding?
Right here, the area covered in black is Great Britain.
Unlike England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Great Britain is a geographical — rather than a political — term.
Great Britain is the largest island among the British Isles.
Within the United Kingdom, the term 'Great Britain' is often used to refer to — England, Scotland, and Wales alone
— with the intentional exclusion of Northern Ireland.
This is mostly, but not completely, true, as all three constituent countries have islands that are not part of Great Britain:
such as the Isle of Wight (part of England), the Welsh Isle of Anglesey,
the Scottish Hebrides, the Shetland Islands, the Orkney Islands, and the Islands of the Clyde.
The second biggest island in the British Isles is Ireland.
It's worth noting, at this point, that Ireland is not a country;
like Great Britain, it's a geographical — not political — term.
The Island of Ireland contains, on it, two countries:
Northern Ireland, which we have already discussed, and the Republic of Ireland.
When people say they are 'Irish,' they're referring to the Republic of Ireland
(which is a separate country from the United Kingdom).
However, both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom are members of the European Union —
even though England, in particular, likes to pretend that it's an island in the mid-Atlantic,
rather than 50 kilometers off the coast of France — but that's a story for another time.
To review:
the two largest islands in the British Isles are Ireland and Great Britain.
Ireland has, on it, two countries — the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland;
while Great Britain, mostly, contains three: England, Scotland and Wales.
These last three, when combined with Northern Ireland, form the United Kingdom.
There are still many unanswered questions: such as, why, when you travel to Canada,
is there British royalty on the money?
To answer this, we need to talk about empire.
You can't have gone to school, in the English-speaking world, without having learned that the British Empire



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