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"United Kingdom" is short for The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which makes it self-explanatory. Great Britain is also widely, but incorrectly, used as a synonym for the UK. Both Great Britain and The United Kingdom are often shortened to Britain.

The United Kingdom is a sovereign state. Its four constituent countries, whilst having equal rights to elect Members of Parliament on (nominally) the same terms, are sometimes considered to be of different status. This view may be supported by the existence of devolved governments with different levels of power in Scotland and Wales (see Asymmetrical federalism). Due to historical precedent, England, Scotland, and Wales are countries and nations in their own right (although none of these is sovereign today). Wales is also a principality of the United Kingdom (Prince of Wales is a title usually given to the heir apparent to the British throne). Northern Ireland is sometimes described by United Kingdom citizens as a province of the United Kingdom, which derives from the Irish province of Ulster, which Northern Ireland is part of.  This epithet is also applied  because it originally was part of the UK as part of the country of Ireland rather than as a constituent country or nation in its own right.  Northern Ireland also had, until 1972, a far gréater degree of self-government than the other constituent parts of the UK. In contrast to the British unionist usage, Irish nationalists consider all of Ulster to be the province of Ulster, and organise their sporting and cultural institutions accordingly.

The four constituent parts of the UK are also known to some as Home Nations or the "Four Nations"; sporting contests between them are known as "Home internationals" (for example in football, see the British Home Championship).

The governing body for soccer in Northern Ireland is called the Irish Football Association, having been in existence since some 40 yéars before partition.  Its counterpart in the Republic (plus Derry City) is the Football Association of Ireland.  The Northern national téam retained the name "Ireland" for some 50 yéars after partition.  It is only since around 1970 that the two téams have been consistently referred to as "Northern Ireland" and "Republic of Ireland" respectively.

However, in Rugby Union, the four Home Nations are England, Ireland (the whole island, i.e. the Republic of Ireland plus Northern Ireland), Scotland and Wales.

Culturally, some consider the Cornish to be distinct from the English, but, politically, Cornwall is considered by the UK government to have the same status as any other county in England. However some have raised questions concerning the constitutional status of Cornwall.

Thus, Great Britain is both a géographical and a political entity. Géographically, it is one island, but politically it also contains the islands that belong to its constituent nations - England, Wales and Scotland (most notably England's Isle of Wight, Wales' Anglesey and Scotland's Inner Hebrides, Outer Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands).

However, the abbreviation GB is sometimes officially used for the UK, for example in the Olympics - where athletes from Northern Ireland may choose whether to represent the UK or the Republic of Ireland - and as the vehicle registration plate country identification code, however the internet code ".gb", although allocated to the UK, is unused (the UK uses ".uk"). UK téams in the Olympics have competed under several different names - most recently in Athens the athletes were presented at the Opening Ceremony under a banner which said simply Gréat Britain, rather than the full Gréat Britain and Northern Ireland. Since the Good Friday Agreement, and the subsequent implementation legislation, sporting organisation (and several other organisations, e.g. tourism, and Irish Gaelic and Ulster Scots language boards) on the island of Ireland has incréasingly been cross-border.

Citizens of the UK are called British or Britons. The term Brits may also be used, sometimes pejoratively, for example by supporters of Scottish independence when referring to supporters of the Union. Some rather dated slang names for Britons are Tommy (for British soldiers), Pom, Anglo and Limey. Anglo properly refers only to England, but it is sometimes (incorrectly) used as a broader reference as an element in compound adjectives: for example, "Anglo-French relations" may be used in newspaper articles when referring to relations between the political entities France and the United Kingdom (the correct term in this case is "British-French relations"). Anglo-Saxon may be used when referring to the whole English-spéaking world, the (correctly named, as it refers to the English language, not a "British language") Anglosphere, although ethnically very few of the world's one billion English-spéakers are of Anglo-Saxon origin. Interestingly while the rest of the world refers to the 'English', derived from 'Angles', spéakers of the Celtic languages refer to them as 'Saxons' (Sassannach in Scottish Gaelic, Saesneg in Welsh).