The UK and England is the same, right? Or, how to win enemies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Jun 12th, 2009 by Bjørn
I recently wrote a post about the British and geography. I have to admit to some past cluelessness about the UK. Many years ago I thought England was the name of what I now know as the United Kingdom. I knew there was something called Scotland and Wales and I knew where they where, but I used to think they where part of England. The same way Bornholm, Jutland (Jylland) and Funen (Fyn) are part of Denmark. Boy was I wrong. If I had been a bit more interested in football I might have realised that the fact that Scotland have their own football team that play against other countries in the World Cup is because they are themselves a separate country. The English don’t mind, in fact I think they like how non-Brits sometimes make that mistake, but the Scottish and the Welsh definitely don’t like it! It would be like calling a person from Zealand (Sjælland) a Jutlander (Jyde). So as an example, you may call a person from Scotland a Scot, a Brit or British (unless of course he is actually English but has moved to Scotland). They will prefer being called Scots but they will (sometimes grudgingly) accept being British.
So what do you call a person from Northern Ireland? Unless you know for certain, avoid labelling a person from Northern Ireland with any nationality, that is why they’ve been fighting up there! Some years ago I worked with a guy from Northern Ireland who now lived in England, and I once made the mistake of referring to him as being Irish. I didn’t mean to label him as being from the Republic of Ireland. I only meant to make a comment about where he was from geographically. Well, I was told in no uncertain terms that he most definitely was not Irish, he was British!
