UK or GB?

WooPeeA

There's few things that are bothering me..

1. Why some people say Great Britain and some of them United Kingdom.. I know people that say UK all the time and know people that used to say GB.. Does it depend on the region, accent or what? I know those two means the same but which one is more correct?

2. And same here.. Is it Holland or Netherlands? What's correct?

Victor

"UK" is "United Kingdom" (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

"GB" is "Great Britain" and doesn't include Northern Ireland.

"Holland" is a province (I think theres actually a couple of them). "The Netherlands" is the country.

DundalkDuffman

GB doesn't include Northern IReland while United Kingdom does.
As for the Dutch one I remember asking a guy at the WC2006 in Germany about it. He told me that Holland really only refers to a large area of The Netherlands and it wasn't properly accurate to call the national team Holland as it included other provinces. The reason that so many people called it Holland was that it was their region and they saw the national team as their own regardless of the other provinces influences.

WooPeeA

Now I get the point. But many Brits used to call their country GB.. You can found lots of "GB" lebels on the cars etc..

DundalkDuffman

Oh as I remember it too, he was a PSV fan and their fans would only call the national side Netherlands while the Feynoord and Ajax fans were more likely to call it Holland.

LordSutch

I agree 100% with all the previous posters re the difference between GB & UK, but its still amazing how many English & Irish people get confused about the terms UK & GB - you will hear many Irish people saying "I'm off to the UK for the weekend ??? (meaning England I think)? because the same people will say on another occassion "I'm off to Scotland for the weekend" (as if Scotland wasnt in the UK)!!!
Irish Radio Stations & Irish Mobile phone advertisements are the worst offenders, constantly mixing up their UKs with their GBs etc > would you like to roam with 'Meteor' in the "UK or Northern Ireland"

Many Irish people talk about the "UK & Northern Ireland" as if the North had left the UK !!! and then English people talk about "Britain" meaning "England" or talk about "England when they really mean "Britain" (England, Scotland, & Wales) I heard an Irish friend of mine recently saying that she had taken the train from Britain up to Scotland !!! amazing ignorance

Its appalling really, how so many people are so confused about local geography!

But here is an equation I was taught in college many years ago which still applies today . . .
(England + Scotland + Wales = GB + N.Ireland = UK)

We could get onto another perplexing issue of why the 'GB' Olympic Team wasnt called team UK (seeing as there were several NI competitors), but even the BBC Commentators seem totally confused about that one!

JayeL

I read somewhere that the reason the UK team is GB in the Olympics is due to Northern Ireland, where athletes can declare for GB or Ireland. It essentially regards NI as neutral territory.

On the larger point, where people get the two confused, I've tried to point this out to people in the company I work for. We were designing a new card recently and I pointed out that the phrase "UK and Northern Ireland" didn't quite make sense and could be offensive to some people. I suggested "Britain and Northern Ireland" or "GB and Northern Ireland" but no-one really took on board, so the new card still uses the old phrase. Well, I tried!

LordSutch

Your kidding right ?

The "UK & Northern Ireland" is whats called an 'Oxymoron' or a contradiction in terms, because N.Ireland is already in the UK so how can it be "UK & Northern Ireland"

If this really is the case, maybe you could show one of your colleagues this Thread - to enlighten them.

Talliesin

WooPeeA wrote: »

Now I get the point. But many Brits used to call their country GB.. You can found lots of "GB" lebels on the cars etc..

It's worth noting that GB is an ISO 3166 code (and some other codes) as well as a commonly used colloquial abbreviation.

So. Colloquially, GB = Great Britain & UK = United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (which also includes some smaller islands that aren't strictly Great Britain).

In many official abbreviations GB = United Kingdom. Which is a bit of a confusion.

In contexts where you would use IE for Ireland, DK for Denmark etc. you would use GB for the whole United Kingdom. The one exception being ccTLDs because back when the Internet was heavily influenced by Universities some people in Queens objected to being included in GB, so Jon Postel used UK instead. Since UK is specially reserved in ISO 3166 there's no danger of it being applied to another country and causing further confusion (was enough of a nuisance when Serbia and Montenegro got assigned CS just a few years after it had stopped being used for Czechosolvakia).

See ISO 3166 for more details.

Victor

Talliesin wrote: »

So. Colloquially, GB = Great Britain & UK = United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (which also includes some smaller islands that aren't strictly Great Britain).

Legally, the Isle of Man and Channel Islands are not part of the UK - they are crown dependencies.

Angelsea, the Hebridies, Orkneys, Shetlands, etc are part of the UK and it can be argued that they are outlying islands of Great Britain and thereby part of it.

SoCal90046

JayeL wrote: »

I read somewhere that the reason the UK team is GB in the Olympics is due to Northern Ireland, where athletes can declare for GB or Ireland. It essentially regards NI as neutral territory.

On the larger point, where people get the two confused, I've tried to point this out to people in the company I work for. We were designing a new card recently and I pointed out that the phrase "UK and Northern Ireland" didn't quite make sense and could be offensive to some people. I suggested "Britain and Northern Ireland" or "GB and Northern Ireland" but no-one really took on board, so the new card still uses the old phrase. Well, I tried!

I believe that the Olympic team in question was always referred to as coming from Great Britain. You can go as far back as 1908, when the British won almost have the medals (move half the Gold and Silver medals), when the UK consisted of Great Britain and Ireland; in those Olympic games, there were athletes from Ireland on the British team, though in a few sports, they competed as Irish Olympians, even though there wasn't an Irish team.

amacachi

Camelot wrote: »

Many Irish people talk about the "UK & Northern Ireland" as if the North had left the UK !!! and then English people talk about "Britain" meaning "England" or talk about "England when they really mean "Britain" (England, Scotland, & Wales) I heard an Irish friend of mine recently saying that she had taken the train from Britain up to Scotland !!! amazing ignorance

Britain can be used to refer to England only, whereas Great Britain is the Island.

SoCal90046

I have always wondered about the British Flag, well the Flag of the United Kingdom. It consists of the Crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. The Cross of St. Patrick was included following the Act of Union in 1800. Why wasn't this symbol for the island of Ireland removed after 1922? Was it left to placate the majority in the north of Ireland that wanted to maintain some symbol of Ireland in the flag of the United Kingdom?

Victor

amacachi wrote: »

Britain can be used to refer to England only, whereas Great Britain is the Island.

Well, more England + Wales.

SoCal90046 wrote: »

I have always wondered about the British Flag, well the Flag of the United Kingdom. It consists of the Crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. The Cross of St. Patrick was included following the Act of Union in 1800. Why wasn't this symbol for the island of Ireland removed after 1922? Was it left to placate the majority in the north of Ireland that wanted to maintain some symbol of Ireland in the flag of the United Kingdom?

Part of Ireland was still in the UK.