Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles: what’s the difference?

This is generally the source of much confusion, even amongst those who live over here.

If you look carefully at the description of the United Kingdom (on a passport say), you’ll see it’s the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". So the UK is both of those.

Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles and includes the three countries: England, Scotland and Wales.

The British Isles is the group of islands as a whole, including all of Ireland.

The British Isles also include several significant islands that are part of Scotland, such as the Hebrides (Inner and Outer), and the Northern Isles of both Orkney and Shetland. It also encloses the Isle of Man, which sits in the Irish Sea between England and Northern Island and is actually a self-governing British Crown Dependency with its own parliament and government.

For a little more subtlety, there's the term the British Islands (as opposed to Isles), which includes the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which sit closer to France.

For much further confusion, think for a moment why there’s a UK passport, Great Britain in the Olympic games, and in football, we compete as England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland separately. 🤔

Also see:

• the Union Jack: The making of a flag
• The Coastline paradox