Michael D Higgins insists he is President of Ireland, refuses to commemorate partition

Britain or Great Britain can be used to refer to the island.

The Act of Britain was the merging of England and Wales and the Act of Great Britain was merging Scotland to it. But these were political acts.the island is known in geographical terms as both Great Britain and Britain.

As an atheist firmly in the Nationalist camp who doesn't celebrate St Patrick's Day, with family from both Protestant and Catholic faiths I genuinely don't know how anyone could make an argument that Saint Patrick isn't the patron Saint of Ireland.

Given that Saint Patrick predates the reformation by around a millennium and partition by almost half of that again, I certainly have no idea how anyone could make his status as Patron Saint of the island into a Catholic/Protestant issue.

It's even more amusing when one realises the Church of Ireland and the DUP have both tried to claim he was a Protestant.

We certainly won't mention the Saint Patrick's Saltire....

First of all, we all know what predictions mean.

Secondly, as per the article, religious affiliation means nothing about the political outlook of a UI

Lastly, a majority is a misnomer as a majority means greater than 50% not one is greater than the other

The rest of your post is word salad in order to appear clever.

As we all know, as per the GFA one has a right to be called British or Irish or both if they are from NI. So your geographic facts don't apply to NI, we all know that.

Ha, hoist by your own petard as they say.

You were the one a few posts ago who let the mask slip on 'political affiliations' being married to what religion you are. It comes back to bite you now.

Some chancer.

A Catholic majority is predicted at the next census.(back up link provided from the BBC) I don't think Blaaz claimed there was one now.

Ireland and Great Britain.

The term hasn't been used officially by your own government in decades and the British one certainly does not use in dealing with us.

I challenged blanch to find me a modern map with the designation on it and the best he could do was one from 1958 if I remember correctly.

Your words, own them.

You connected constitutional change (or not) to religious affiliation, not I. I know you might not want to see your mask slipping, but here it is again>

3 blocks - those who do not identify as (1) Catholic or Protestant and (2) Catholics and (3) Protestants.

What other way is there to understand that comment?

The Isle of Man gets left out?? Poor them :)

The archipelago Francie. Banal comments aside, you know what I am on about.

"Islands have names"

Yes, and the archipelago that we are, along with Great Britain and the Isle of Man is called the "British Isles".

If we're writing in English then yes, it should just be Ireland.....as that is the name of our state.

People certainly can be sensitive about names, particularly when someone is clearly using it to goad. I made a post in passing specifically stating that the term doesn't particularly offend me but pointing out that your supposed source contained more than one terminological mistake and therefore probably wasn't a particularly useful bit of evidence when discussing terminology, so I don't really get what relevance that has to my post though?

What sort of nonsense is, "the term has been around longer than recent Irish Nationalism" though?! Presumably you're just trying to get a dig in at Irish Nationalists as usual, but what purpose does the word recent have in there? The term is older than anything recent....otherwise that thing wouldn't be recent, would it?! What is the cut off point for recent versus historic Irish Nationalism out of curiosity?

Anglo-Irish archipelago sounds even worse than, 'British Isles' to my ear to be honest. Then again, as I said I take no great offense at the term, I just don't see much of a purpose to it that necessitates it any more than I see a purpose to having a catch-all term to describe Germany and Austria, or France and Switzerland.

The Archipelago is a geographical feature and the name that seems to have stuck is the British Isles. I have no problem with this and think it is a bit petty for people not to accept this. Remember it was the Romans that actually named Britain. By the way a demoym would not be British but ''British islanders'' Untill I just wrote this phrase I have never once herd a person being referred to as a British Islander. British means you are from Britain the Island. When people from the north say they're British they're usually referring to the fact that their ancestors a few hundred years before came from Britain.

The French description of Ireland always seemed the most apt to me, as in "L'île derrière l'île"

And that reflects our real position in relation to Europe and the EU and matters pertaining.

You can't escape geography and geography heavily impacts on history. No escape.

Ha, the old European colonial derision of Mercator's Projection.

I think Brexit showed that your distance from the EU/Europe is all in the mind, and it was to the forefront of the Brexiteer minds who thought they could use that old idea of geography to use us, isolate us and cut us off.