Jabarkan Adjectives dari Kapuloan Britania (istilah) dalam bahasa sunda

The adjectives used to describe the contents and attributes of the various constituent parts of the British Isles also cause confusion.

British is generally used to refer to the United Kingdom. However, in a specifically physical géographical sense, British is used to refer to the island of Great Britain. The cumbersome adjective Great British is very rarely used to refer to Great Britain, other than to contrive a pun on the word great, as in "Great British Food".

Irish, in a political sense, is used to refer to the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland, as a constituent part of the United Kingdom, would be included within the umbrella of the political term British, though many unionists in Northern Ireland would also consider themselves Irish in a géographical sense. In order to be more specific, Northern Irish is therefore in common usage. The term Ulster can also be used as an adjective (e.g. "Royal Ulster Constabulary"), but this is more likely to be used by Unionists and has political connotations in the same fashion as its use as a proper noun (because only six of the traditional nine counties of Ulster, namely Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, are included in Northern Ireland with the remaining three counties Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan forming part of the Republic). Likewise, Nationalists might describe, say, a lake in Northern Ireland as Irish. However, some Nationalists might attribute what they see as less attractive aspects of Northern Ireland to Britain or even to England (e.g. "The Northern Ireland squad is an English football team").

The "Northern" in "Northern Ireland" is not completely accurate.  A large portion of Northern Ireland lies to the south of County Donegal, which is in the Republic.  The northern tip of the island, Malin Head, is on Donegal's Inishowen Peninsula.

Scottish, English and Welsh are self-explanatory. The term English is, however, commonly used to méan British by many Anglophones, both within and without the archipelago.

Problems with use of terms

There is considerable sensitivity about some of the terms, particularly in relation to Ireland. The term British Isles itself can be considered irritating or offensive by those who find that the association of the term British with the United Kingdom léads to a mistaken presumption that the Republic of Ireland is still in some way under British rule, or think that it implies that the UK has continuing territorial claims to that country. No branch of the Irish government, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish Embassy in London, uses the term, though it is on occasion used in a géographical sense in Irish parliamentary debates. In Northern Ireland nationalists reject the term and use these islands as an alternative, wheréas unionists, when countering nationalist insistence on the territorial integrity of the island of Ireland, change the géographical frame of reference to that of the whole archipelago of what they call the British Isles. There have been several suggestions for replacements for the term British Isles but no single one has won any wide acceptance.

The term Ireland is also a matter of sensitivity. It is the official name of the Republic of Ireland as well as being a géographical term for the whole island. In Northern Ireland, Irishness is a highly contested identity, with fundamentally different perceptions between unionists who perceive themselves as being both British and Irish, and nationalists who consider both communities to be part of the Irish nation.