Engerland, Engerland

You are right, of course, and I also grimace when hearing “England” used this way (as I do often, living in Canada).

But let those without sin cast the first stone.

The number of times since I have been over here that I’ve heard British people (UK-ians?) talk about “America” and include Canada in that boggles the mind. I’ve seen the Grauniad refer to Naomi Klein as American and observe that the BlackBerry comes “of course, from America”.

One prize was when David Owen, being interviewed one late November day on the CBC, wished his listeners a happy thanksgiving. He was clearly pleased with himself for knowing that Americans had this odd holiday, and for knowing when it was.

Too bad that he didn’t know that Canadian’s had alread celebrated Thanksgiving 6 weeks earlier.

I made the same mistake when I first came over. For some reason, Canadians aren’t keen on it.

Just saying, that’s all…

Great Britain and England are two different entities. My (Glaswegian-ancestry) wife would strongly concur.

In the other direction–not all Americans are Yankees. Yankee is a significant insult in the South, not a self-description.

Funny… most of the people I know who are guilty of using “England” to refer to the UK or GB (ambiguously) are English – myself included – not (North) American.

I’ve also come across some anger from Brazilians regarding the use of “America” to refer to the USA: somehow they feel that Central and South America are slighted by this.

BTW, many parts of the UK have odd statuses: I come from Cornwall, which nurses a separate regional identity as something other than England, even though it lacks the honour of ‘separate kingdom’ status. Historically, this has translated into its being ignored as though it were Wales, or overseas,* but not acknowledged with a separate football team. I can’t speak for folks from the Isle of Man, but I understand their situation is quite a bit stranger, and that they have the unique distinction of being British, but not being entitled to work in Europe.

* I understand the EU has been doing its best not to ignore Cornwall recently, mostly by enriching Londoners with funding schemes which have debatable value for the locals. Plus ca change…

There’s also a London. Ohio, an even less rewarding place to spend a weekend than the one in Ontario.

Well if you stuck to one football team for the UK that would help.

It’s also annoying when the hyper-correctionism kicks in. I was watching the world cup at work and the (american) guy next to me kept saying ‘UK’ refering to England.

“Saying ‘England’ when you mean ‘Britain’ is gauche and annoying and very, very blonde.”

Ah, but these are newfangled ideas. A J P Taylor pointed out in his English History 1914-1945 that ‘Britain’ was “the name of a Roman province which perished in the fifth century which included none of Scotland nor, indeed, all of England”, and moreover:

[Previously ‘England’] meant indiscriminantly ‘England and Wales’; Great Britain; the United Kingdom; and even the British Empire … Bonar Law, a Scotch Canadian, was not ashamed to describe himself as ‘Prime Minister of England’, as Disraeli, a Jew by birth, had done before him … The use of ‘England’ except for a geographic area brings protests, especially from the Scotch. They seek to impose ‘Britain’ — the name of a Roman province which perished in the fifth century and which included none of Scotland nor, indeed, all of England … ‘Great Britain’ is correct and has been since 1707. It is not, however, synonymous with the United Kingdom, as the Scotch, forgetting the Irish (or, since 1922, the Northern Irish), seem to think. Again, the United Kingdom does not cover the Commonwealth, the colonial empire, or India. Whatever word we use lands us in a tangle.’

And for those riled by the use of ‘Scotch’, he went on to say:

The inhabitants of Scotland now call themselves ‘Scots’ and their affairs ‘Scottish’. They are entitled to do so. The English word for both is ‘Scotch’, just as we call les francaise the French, and Deutschland Germany. Being English, I use it.

It may be annoying, and some might call it gauche — but it sure ain’t blonde.

I have occasionally taken to referring to the USA as “Texas”. I find that my Californian friends get the message quite quickly.

Sign me up as an EU-passport carrying person of English birth who uses England as opposed to the UK or Britain. I’ve heard people tell me they were going to Britain for vacation and it makes me cringe. Not so much as when I hear Ireland tagged as a “British Isle” though . . .  

Why can’t English people call their patch, exclusive of Wales and Scotland, England? If anyone asks me where I was born, I don’t answer “Great Britain” (what’s so great about it?) or “The United Kingdom” (United? What’s Plaid Cymru’s take on that?). I think the “nails on a chalkboard” irritation is a self-inflicted, um, wound.

So what should I, as an Ontarian who has friends in the nearby London, say when I mean the other London?

The Olympic team is specifically and officially _GB_ish on account of the bi-eligibility of Northern Irish athletes for that or the Irish team, at their personal discretion.

For pedants, there is also the EnglandandWales cricket team (distinct from the Scottish one, which isn’t especially good), and of course EnglandandWales also has a quite different legal system from Scotland.

I once irritated my Zwedish teacher by demanding a more accurate translation of “UK” than “Storbrittanien” (lit. “Great Britain”), and that was long before I expatriated. Dutchpersons call my native nation-state “Engeland” at least as often as not, but my compatriates (and others) call their country “Holland”, so it’s probably even. (I live in Groningen, which is a long way from North or South Holland, and my zweetie is a regionaliste geographer, so I am pretty much obliged to call it “the Netherlands”.)

A friend of mine uses “Disunited Queendom;” it’s an irritating affectation, but it gets the idea across.

I guess we’re not talking about nationalism and the nation state here (the confused nature of which leads directly to the confusion over terms) because we don’t want to break the polite tone.

for myself, I like the slipperiness and indefinability of the thing – it’s never quite categorisable as anything: it’s not quite the whole archipelago, not quite a republic (and not really a sincere monarchy), not quite in Europe, not quite a state of the USA (despite having a subservient foreign policy), not quite atheist and not quite religious, not quite expensive enough to force mass emigration… not quite (I contend) a nation.

As someone who feels, at best, ambivalent about all those things, I revel in being not quite included.

Tom Nairn at one point in The Enchanted Glass adopted the usage “Ukanian”. I could see that leading to some confusion these days, though, especially at the World Cup.

But that is no excuse to toss your hair and talk about your summer holidays in ‘England’ where you also took in the Lake District.

If the Lakes District is not in England, then where is it?

While in grad school I encountered an academic writer who used the term “unitedstatesian” rather than “American” as a descriptive term referring to the US.

Italian actually has a word statunitense. (And French has états-unien, but I think that’s quite a bit less common than the Italian equivalent, which is itself way less common than americano.)

Also: referring to the “United States” (in English or any other language) solves one problem of linguistic hegemony, but arguably raises another, as our friends down in the Estados Unidos Mexicanos might point out.

So I have to mention Berwick Upon Tweed; still holding back the Russians after all these years.

As they say at http://www.thenortheast.fsnet.co.uk/BerwickuponTweed.htm

“It is hardly surprising that given Berwick’s curious Anglo Scotish location, the local residents tend to regard themselves as independent `Tweedsiders’ or `Berwickers’ rather than English or Scottish. In fact until the Reform Act of 1885 Berwick did have a considerable degree of independence with the status of a `Free Burgh’ meaning that it had to be mentioned seperately in Acts of Parliament.

Berwick’s status was such that even the Crimean War had to be declared in the name of Great Britain, Ireland and Berwick Upon Tweed. Strangely after this war, when the peace treaty was signed Berwick’s name was omitted and for many years the town was said to be technically still at war with the Russians.”

And, sorry, but Americans are the worst offenders.

When getting my immigration biometrics done — always pleasant to be fingerprinted by the American government — I had ‘UK’ scrubbed from my form and replaced with ‘England’: apparently Ukraine has the right to ‘UK’ as a country code in the database, leaving the Brits with ‘EN’. As I noted to the person in charge, that’s going to piss off the Celts something rotten.

Anyway, Linda Colley’s Britons is the canonical work on the formation of a distinctive British identity in the 18th century to cope with a twice-imported monarchy and merged parliaments. The idea that one can be British without being ‘ethnically’ English, Scottish, Welsh or Nor’nIrish isn’t a new one.

(The real nails-on-blackboard thing is Americans who don’t understand that it’s not ‘Sir Branson’ or ‘Sir Jagger’ when trying to talk to a knight.)

Nice point, Jon (in #16). I am sure it would do some good to refer to the citizens of Mexico as Americans, along with being a lot of fun to watch when certain people north of the border try to square that with a generally anti-immigrant stance.

Christopher M, I say ‘the states’ because that’s what people around me use. And I’m not in London, but in one of England’s rather less pretentious urban conglomerations.

And I’m glad that I’m not the only one who spotted Maria’s faux pas about the Lake District. Perhaps she means the Highlands. Or a different Lake District.

And whose fault would it be if the inhabitants of England, Scotland, Wales, the Duchy of Cornwall, the Isle of Manx, Eire, etc etc etc have not agreed upon a common appellation that others can apply upon them?

In America it’s simple- we’re Americans, and they’re not, they are Canadians, because they are British.

Honestly, does the rule of the Queen mean nothing now?

‘The States’ is something I often hear from Canadian friends. ‘Unitedstatesians’ always just strikes me as dumb, no matter how well intentioned. It’s not our fault part of the name of the continent and the country overlap.

Plus, the United States of Mexico. How arrogant, to assume we’re the only united states. There are Germanic regions other than Germany. Bundesrepubliker now? Dominionites? Kingdomites?

As a NZer who spent 5 years in the UK, I use and hear ‘the States’ or ‘the US’ quite often, especially when wanting to concisely distinguish from Canada.
‘Yank’ is common to refer to any USAians, but is more likely to be avoided if the subject is obviously Southern. ‘Yankee’ would generally be a rare deliberate reference to a non-modern-era Northerner.

No clue. Seems to be common though among Canadians of all ages. That said, the adjective for a citizen of the States is ‘American’, even from Canadians. But Americans don’t come from America, they come from the States.

American expats of all economic and social classes routinely say “the States.” American military say “stateside.”

Latin Americans say “norteamericano” to mean Americans and Canadians. They also say “centroamericano” and “sudamericano.” Mexico doesn’t seem to fall into any of these categories.

In Europe, any American is a Yankee. In the American South, any Northerner is a Yankee. In the North, any New Englander is a Yankee. In New England, you have to be descended from 17th century English settlers to be a Yankee.

It is true that here in Australia, “the States” is often used to refer to that place Yanks come from (I have done so myself). Which is a bit confusing when you think about it, because we have states here too. Luckily, most people probably don’t actually think about it.

Britain is mostly called “the UK” or “England”, I guess. I’m in the habit of calling it Britain, because I’m a British historian. Well, I’m an Australian historian of Britain then …

The Associated Press covers all of this in excruciating detail, for anyone who wants to write using these terms. My copy is not at hand at the moment, so this is just memory speaking. The United Kingdom is generally the proper first reference, with Britain being acceptable in second and subsequent. London stands on its own, if it is the one on the Thames. Individual bits of the United Kingdom are identified separately, when relevant.

Unless you’re writing formally, though, I don’t see any great need for uniform usage. Attempts to impose such often lead to more silliness. For instance, German books are often translated “aus dem Amerikanischen,” while people from, say, London, Ohio, are called “US-Amerikaner” because one wouldn’t want to imply that other people from the American continent (they seem only to have the one, while we have North and South) are not also “Amerikaner.” What that says about translating from the “Amerikanischen” I leave as an exercise to readers. We can also get exercised about what Joyce was translated from. The English? The Irish? The temporarily-living-in-Triestish? Although if you’re translating Joyce, that is probably the least of your difficulties.

Just as Germans are likely to forget the United States of Mexico when they speak of the “Vereinigten Staaten,” they are often prone to overlook the fact that their neighbors in Austria are also a “Bundesrepublik” and will speak of “die Bundesrepublik” as if it were the only one. Should I get grief for speaking about “Amerikaner” rather than “US-Amerikaner,” I think I will start asking what the capital of the Federal Republic is, and woe if the answer is not Vienna…

UK and US are both perfectly acceptable adjectives, which I tend to use as default. The problem only arises with the derived noun. As a rule of thumb, if I know the person’s preferred identity I use it (my brother in law is a Welshman but my neighbours are British), but I’m impatient with people who make a scene about it. Did you expect them to set up a sub-committee in 1707 (or 1775) to rule on all the contingencies?

I’ve always wondered why tourists refer to ‘the English Lake District’, given that Cumbria is certainly the least English part of England (& the only part never subsumed into an Anglo-Saxon kingdom). Presumably it’s originally a Victorian usage to distinguish from holidaymakers who went to the Italian Lake District . . .

England is England, England plus Wales is Britain, Britain plus Scotland is Great Britain, add the six counties of NI (or Ulster to choice) to get the UK.

Above that, geographical terms like “The British Isles ” include Eire and the Isle of Man and so on.

The Cornish? Certainly their performances over the years in the county rugby championship were marked by a distinct “us” against those English bastards….all of them.

The Archipelago Formerly Known as British? Thus AFKAB, Afkabian, inter-Afkabian affairs, the Afkabian diaspora.

England has never held the presidency of the EU, or hosted the G8, or invaded a country on its own (at least not in a few hundred years), because it’s not a state.

Personally, I’ve always had a preference for referring to the UK as “Greater England” if we’re to be precise as to how it came into being :-)

Christopher M : –

“Another interesting usage is referring to the U.S.A. as “the States.” I’ve only ever heard it from (1) Europeans (possibly Australians as well, though I’m not sure about that), and (2) culturally elite Americans who pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism.”

The Cadets :-
“Meanwhile, back in the States…”
from “Standed in the Jungle” 1956.

The Channel Islands are British, but not part of the UK. In tax work, this is a rather critical distinction…

re: 32. [USA originally intended to be] “something a lot like what the EU will be once its major wrinkles get ironed out”

– I’d love to know what this is: right now the way forward seems cloudier to me than, say, 10 years ago.

28. “the ‘UK’ isn’t actually a monarchy any more”

– this is news to me (although it’s always possible: I haven’t been paying close attention to royal affairs lately). My understanding is that it’s a ‘constitutional’ monarchy, although I’m not aware of any document of constitution, as such, laying out exactly what the nature of the state is and where its powers derive from.

Hmmmmm, my recollection is that the Lake District is in England, just south of the Scottish border.

It all seems very complicated and based on history and an almost foreign language and we Americans aren’t good at either, excepting a few pedants who just annoy everybody. Now, I can be annoying in that way, myself, and I’ve been to England but not Scotland, not Wales, not Ulster and not the Isle of Wright nor of Man and I found London to be there. I do confess to some ignorance as to why the Queen’s image is on Canadian money, what your country (whatever its called) has currently to do with Australia or India and if it runs any major city-states in eastern Asia.

I understand that somebody, possibly an authorized government body, put it out that your neck of the woods be referred to as Great Britain in 1707 or so. That’s when your neck of the woods included my neck of the woods. That particular inclusion ended later that century so I suppose your place became Lesser Great Britain though no act of Parliment declared it so.

Though I was only in England it seemed awful Great to me, and certainly British, so it shouldn’t be difficult for me to adjust my language to avoid offending you and any other Brits in earshot. BTW, is it OK to call you “Brits”?

I should never wish to refer to any Britain (now I’ve probably done it again. The Britain is a person who lived in the areas now being discussed in ancient times, being since added to by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Normans. I can’t say British as it’s an adjective but to say Britain doesn’t seem fair to all the others) as a floating plankton. The British (I take this word to mean those like the Britains) seemed free to call me a Yank (which I took to be short for Yankee though I was a Detroit Tiger fan) and I in no way discouraged that. Perhaps I should have but – why?

Anyway, Mick is what we Americans used to call the Irish a long time ago when, for esoteric reasons, we didn’t fancy them. I don’t know why any American would object to be called one as we can’t seem to get enough of the Irish nowadays. And who uses the word limey anymore?

Be it ever so rarely named, there’ll always be an England. And what a wonderful name it is, especially from the perspective of a citizen of a country that has no name. “The USA” actually denotes the absence of anything more than the collection of its parts. Ironically, we are a nation full of fantastic place names, yet lack what every other country has, that name above all names. For this deficiency the world holds us in contempt. I’ve been mortified to learn, for example, that we are hideously called by the adjective “estadounidense”, as in “el dólar estadounidense.” “Unitedstatesians,” alas. It’s fine for Mexicans to call themselves “Los Estados Unidos” because they can add the splendid modifier “Mexicanos.” But “America” means nothing whatsoever but a misnomer. By the way, Mexico is quite analagous to England in that Mexico is actually but one place (now State and contiguous federal district) and historical people of that country. When you say “Mexico” there, you refrer to the State of Mexico and to the federal district.

Personally I like to cut this newfangled crap and just go with “Albion.”

#72: Wikipedia has “Great Britain” (as a geographical term) is the largest and most populous island of the archipelago (Entry in Wikipedia: British Isles – Terminology. As I recall it, the “Great” in Great Britain comes as a reference to “Little” Britain or Brittany. Or Bretagne, if you want it in French.

In any event: To foreigners the UK has always been a bit of a constitutional mess (I suppose that you may call this a typical English understatement).

One the one hand, it has traditionally been one of the most centralised European (sic!) countries being run from London, England.

On the other hand Scotland, Wales and (Northern) Ireland have not only had separate regional/national identities – they have also even before the present round of devolution been covered by separate legislation in a number of instances.

I think it is obvious why foreigners have a hard time distinguishing English from British even if we immediately recognise the Welsh, the … ahm … Scots and the Irish. It is perhaps one of the stranger ironies of having an empire that you lose part of your identity.

It is entirely typical of the constitutional mis-mash of the UK that not even the names of the constituent parts or of the whole itself are clear to its subjects. That the new wife of the heir to the throne could be given a completely new title (“Princess Consort”) as if it had always existed, is another example of this make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach.

#74. As far as I’m aware there is a difference between the words used for the political boundaries andthe geographic ones. I’m entirely happy to accept your meaning of Britain and Great Britain as geographic words.

But, rolling about the back of my mind is the idea that it’s Scotland that puts the “Great ” into Britain.

add the six counties of NI (or Ulster to choice) to get the UK.

There are nine counties in Ulster, not six. Get yourself an atlas!

Not my personal opinion, no, just a phrase that I’ve heard somewhere about the place as a mnemonic on what actually make up the various groupings.

Christopher M: I’d like to back up Michael Connolly, by saying that ARNG personnel sent overseas still use “the States,” as in “back in the States,” to refer to the U.S. (Regular military also use it.) So do tourists in the Caribbean and expats in Mexico, neither of whom are, in general, particularly cosmopolitan. It’s not a class thing; it’s just that “the States” is a purely geographic term. When you’re in the States, most of your references to the “United States” or “America” will refer to something other than a mere geographic expanse.

Cala: The United States of America adopted the name “United States” before the other countries of the Americas did. The other nations adopted the phrase out of admiration for the U.S. federal structure, strange as that might seem today. Only Mexico still retains the appellation. Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela have abandoned it, and there is a half-serious movement to change Mexico’s name to the simple “Mexican Republic.”

Everyone: speaking as someone who taught at a Mexican university for seven years, I can tell you that you can’t win the America/United States battle. Nobody will ever accuse you of appropriating the name of their country when you say “estadounidense” to refer to Americans; but many will laugh at you and happily talk about “americanos.” On the other hand, for every person like that, there will be another ready to express irritation at the use of the continent’s name to refer to a single country. (And yes, people do, if relatively rarely, use “América” to refer to the entire Western Hemisphere.)

Usually I’d choose to be mocked by the former group rather than have to deal with the annoying irritation of the second. After all, the name “United States of America” came about because nobody could decide what to call the new federation — viz “District of Columbia” — and the expansive language about the “independence of America” in the Articles of Confederation. It is what it is; objections from Latin Americans rarely come across as particularly serious. If the U.S. becomes less dominant (or arrogant) in the future, I’d bet good money that the whole “controversy” will quickly seem fusty and incomrehensible.

Not at all like the England/Britain/U.K. controversy at all.

I generally refer to the entirety of the United States as “New York”, and no one seems to object.

I find all the hand-wringing and school-marming over names a little silly. You’ll never please everyone and are bound to piss of someone, sometime.

I say “the UK,” mostly out of habit, and I don’t plan to change. After all, I don’t like it when I’m called a “Yank,” either, but if I can tolerate it, the rest of the world can tolerate “UK.”