Great Britain is an island lying off the western coast of Europe, comprising the main territory of the United Kingdom (UK). Great Britain is also used as a political term describing the combination of
England, Scotland, and Wales, the three nations which together include all of the island.
Great Britain is also widely used as a synonym for the country properly known as the United Kingdom. This usage, found most often in American English, is technically inaccurate as the United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland in addition to the three countries of Great Britain. This
use of Great Britain is thought by some to derive from usage as an abbreviation of the "United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland".
In addition, the British themselves occasionally use the abbreviation GB,
such as in the Olympic Games where the UK team is sometimes informally
referred to as 'Team GB'. The UK also uses the international foreign vehicle identification code of GB. This is
discussed further under Britain.
Geographical definition
With an area of 229,850 kmē (88,745 sq. mi.) the island of Great Britain is
the largest of the British Isles, an archipelago that also includes Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is the largest island in Europe, and eighth largest in the world. It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshu.
Great Britain stretches over approximately ten degrees of latitude on its
longer, north-south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and
mountains predominate in the western and northern regions. Before the end of the last ice
age, Great Britain was a peninsula of Europe; the rising sea levels caused by
glacial melting at the end of the ice age caused the formation of the English Channel, the body of water whch now divides Great Britain from the European mainland.
The climate of Great Britain is milder than that of other regions of the Northern Hemisphere at the same latitude, because the warm waters of
the Gulf Stream pass by the British Isles and exert a moderating influence on
the weather. Cool, but not cold, temperatures, clouds more often than sun, and abundant rain are the rule in most years.
Political definition
Great Britain describes the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales. In this sense it includes
distant outlying islands such as the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and
Shetland but does not include the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.
Over the centuries, Great Britain has evolved politically from several independent states (England, Scotland, and Wales)
through two kingdoms with a shared monarch (England and Scotland), a single
all-island Kingdom of Great Britain, to the
situation following 1801, in which Great Britain together with the island of Ireland constituted the larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The UK became the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the 1920s.
Origins and nomenclature
The name Britain is very ancient: the earliest known form is believed to date back to about 325 BC. (See Britain for more on the evolution of the word.)
The term Great Britain was first widely used during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, I of England to describe the island, on which co-existed two separate
kingdoms ruled over by the same monarch. Though England and Scotland each remained
legally in existence as a separate state with its own parliament, collectively they were sometimes referred to as Great Britain.
In 1707, an Act of Union
joined both states. That Act used two different terms to describe the new all island state, a 'united Kingdom' and the 'Kingdom
of Great Britain'. The former is generally though not universally regarded as a description of the union rather than its
name. Most reference books describe the all-island kingdom that existed between 1707 and
1800 as the Kingdom of Great Britain.
In 1801, under a new Act of
Union, this kingdom merged with the Kingdom of Ireland,
over which the monarch of Great Britain had ruled. The new kingdom was unambiguously called the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland. In 1922, twenty-six of Ireland's thirty-two counties left to form
a separate Irish Free State. The remaining truncated kingdom is now
known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
which also now includes a number of Overseas
Territories. Sometimes the term 'Great Britain' is incorrectly used when referring to the 'United Kingdom.' Sometimes the
island of Great Britain (which is the United Kingdom minus Northern Ireland) is incorrectly referred to as 'the mainland', this
is factually incorrect; the larger island is simply 'Great Britain'.
Often the terms Britain and British refer to the whole of the UK or
its predecessors, or institutions associated with them, and not just Great Britain. For example, United Kingdom monarchs are
often called "British monarchs"; United Kingdom Prime Ministers are
often called "British Prime Ministers". Such usage is generally seen as correct. However the use of the term English for
British, as in "Queen of England" as opposed to "Queen of Britain" is clearly incorrect; England in a sense of a separate state
has not existed since 1707, although the four constituent nations go into the Commonwealth Games as separate teams. Another example is when people
are referred to as British Expats, as opposed to English Expats.
Why 'Great' Britain?
There are in fact two "Britain"s: the island of Britain in the British Isles and the land of Britain in France. In French
these are known as Grande Bretagne and Bretagne, in English as Great Britain and Brittany. The word "Great" in this context has its old meaning of "big" as in "she was great with child" or
"Greater London". Likewise, the ending "-y" on the end of "Brittany" has the meaning "Little", as in "doggy", meaning "small
dog", or "Jimmy", meaning "little Jim". In Geoffrey of
Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae from the middle ages, the British Isles were referred to as Britannia
major and Britannia minor. The term "Bretayne the grete" was used by chroniclers as early as 1338, but it was not used officially until King James I proclaimed himself "King of Great Britain" on 20 October 1604 to avoid the more cumbersome
title "King of England and Scotland".
Territories associated with Great Britain
Other lands of the archipelago
Related topics
External links
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