british isles hi thanks for your note i assure you that the detailed explanations you offered weren't necessary for somebody who doesn't live in ireland or in the uk i think i have an excellent knowledge of the region where i differ from you is in my understanding of the word british to my ears british isles is an ancient and 'unmarked' to use some linguistics terminology phrase to my ears the anamalous thing is the use of the adjective british as though it were the proper adjective for the united kingdom it's not when used as such it's imprecise shorthand you call the phrase british isles victorian but of course it is much older than that and the ancient origins of all this terminology vastly predates the modern political situation even if we define modern as meaning the past millennium the deeper question of course is whether you have a terminological objection or a geographical one do you object merely to the phrase british isles or do you object to the whole notion that these particular islands can be considered together as a set because see i think it's pretty obvious at a geographical level far before humans arrived to hurt each other's feelings that the islands can reasonably be considered a group but once we consider them as a group we have to call them something i don't think any alternative to british isles has much currency i understand that for some irish people the phrase rankles but if they think that the phrase when used by people from the uk is full either of arrogance or ignorance or triumphalist glee i'm quite confident they're mistaken in thinking so certainly in the rest of the world outside those two countries british isles is a phrase used constantly and frequently by well educated people who are fully aware of the two countries two islands involved and who have no emotional investment in their sometimes strained history talk