Bastin please refrain from being rude  Your tone of voice is that of the superior and I do not care for it  The Times online webpage does not constitute a checkable reference  The whole premise of this Wikipedia article Kingdom of Great Britain is completely unsupported  The Act of Union  contains the text United Kingdom of Great Britain and it is repeated several times in the Act   The arguement that you support ie the Capitalisation is meaningless can result in either i or iii as listed below  i united kingdom of Great Britain   ii united Kingdom of Great Britain   iii United Kingdom of Great Britain   whereas if one takes the Act of Union  at face value then iii ieUnited Kingdom of Great Britain  is the long form name of the country founded in   The majority of the public knows it under this name ie iii