Talk:British Isles

This definition is in serious dispute. It would be very difficult to find an Irish person who would refer to Ireland as part of the British Isles, or who would accept that the term British Isles contains anything other than the island containing Scotland, Wales, and England and the islands forming part of that jurisdiction. This definition needs to be more informative. I propose the following definition:

A group of islands off the northwest coast of mainland Europe, comprising Great Britain, Ireland (the island, although the inclusion of Ireland is disputed, see below), the Isle of Wight, the Isles of Scilly, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Outer Hebrides, the Inner Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands and many other smaller islands.

Only a small minority of the people on the island of Ireland would define the British Isles as including the island of Ireland. The vast majority would reject the notion as preposterous. Usage of the term "The British Isles" to include Ireland can sometimes be regarded as inappropriate or anachronistic, and such usage may cause offense.

Those of whom who would rather avoid being drawn into discussion on the matter prefer just to use the description “Western European Isles” as this does not contain the word British.


 * I would note that searching on the Irishtimes.com website for "British Isles" gives numerous examples of the use of "British Isles" in the newspaper. Most of them are quite casual and clearly do include the island of Ireland within their meaning. There are people who are vocal about the term being offensive, but they seem to be the ones who are a small minority rather than a vast majority. Dingo1729 03:41, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * In fairness, just glancing at the first page of the Irish Times' search results, about half appear in scare quotes, and it includes one article that mentions the problems with the term:
 * "Her celebration of the OS maps may have obscured a perspective that maps are simplified abstractions of complex worlds and that maps may privilege certain cultures, class groups and institutions in their representations. Hewitt is aware that place names constitute a contested domain. Yet her regular use of the name “British Isles” does not recognise the imperial reach of this term. I would have preferred had she used “Britain and Ireland”. (William J Smyth, 'An A to Z of the mapping of these islands', The Irish Times - Saturday, December 4, 2010)"
 * Certainly the term is used in Ireland. Certainly too the term is contested. However, that does not need to be overstated. --Rannpháirtí anaithnid 04:47, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
 * After spending far more time on this than it deserves, I looked at the most recent 50 uses of "British Isles". 45 of them do not use quotation marks and are clearly, as I said, casual and normal use of the term. Of the remaining 5, a pair are a near duplicate referring to Frederick Douglass and the other three refer to the anti-BI campaign (one of them making fun of it). The usage section here suggests that use of BI is anachronistic. This is ridiculous and the paragraph needs a complete re-write. Dingo1729 16:02, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not quite sure what you are expecting: mass demonstrations? silent vigils? riots? car bombs? Issues can exist with the use of a term without any great show of public sentiment towards it.
 * I've reverted your change and tried to make the section more balanced. Certainly there is no "campaign" and issues with the term are noted by more than just Irish nationalists. I think Norman Davies — neither Irish nor a nationalist (as far as I know) — puts the situation quite well here:
 * "'...having writen Europe: a history, I was invited to give a lecture at University College, Dublin. After the presentation, someone in the audience asked about my current project. I started to reply that I was thinking of writing a history of 'the British—'. I then realized that in Dublin, of all places, one cannot fairly talk of 'the British Isles'. The Isles ceased to be British precisely fifty years ago when the Republic of Ireland left the Commonwealth, though few people in the British residue have yet cared to notice. Various clumsy alternatives were discussed, such as 'the British and Irish Isles', 'Europe's Offshore Islands', and the 'Anglo-Celtic Archipelago'. In the end, it was decided that the only decent name for the forthcoming book was 'A History of These Islands'. And such was one of several working titles until, after much trial and error, I eventually arrived at The Isles: A History.' (Davies, Norman (1999). The Isles: A History. London: Oxford University Press. pp. p. xxii.)"
 * Would you mind posting a link to the article that makes fun of those who take issue with the term. I'd be interested in reading it. Thanks, --Rannpháirtí anaithnid 21:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Will you ever stop? You have based years of Wikipedia campaigning mainly on one notoriously polemical tome and a bunch of glorified pamphlets. I own the Davies too - it's a call for political change. Sorry RA, this 'debating' is the majority of what you've done on WP. The stats simply prove it. For good or bad it's been a mission of yours. For what - 7 years now? Matt Lewis (talk) 03:47, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

In-line with Wikipedia and other encyclopedias, please.
Thousands of hours have been spent on this on Wikipedia. Please do not use Wiktionary to game that. Thank you.

All the major encyclopedias exclude the Channel Islands in their principal definition, but typically state that the term can also include them. Rather than be 'inclusive' without any comment (which can be used to make a political point about the terms 'awkwardness'), we can simply explain the situation. Also, the actual extent of Irish dislike of the term has often been hotly debated on WP (though it's hard to find similar debate in other media outlets), as is the degree it is being used 'less and less' outside of Ireland (if indeed this is actually the case, as the relatively-few examples found of less-use do not indicate how much the term is used daily on British TV, for example). For these reasons, it is best to avoid extreme statements, as there is not sufficient evidence to back them up. We know that at least some people take offence to the term (Wikipedia itself is proof of that) - though not at all how many. There is just not enough evidence around, so why argue between "some" and "many"? It is best to avoid both those words. Matt Lewis 00:27, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It is neither Wiktionary's goal nor prerogative to follow what on-line encyclopedias choose for their social compromises. Wiktionary defines words according to attested usage in published documents, and not just for the most recent 20 years either.  Neither is a definition to be rewritten solely because of a potential for shift in one set of speakers; we have to consider usage in the US, Canada, India, Australia, and South Africa.  If you can show that there has been a global shift in the meaning of this proper noun as used in printed media, then you may have a valid point.  --EncycloPetey 03:47, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Iv'e actually just read this - my apologies. I seem to be the '111' IP of a few days ago too - I must have assumed I was signed in when I made the last edit. I find IP editing really annoying, so apologies for that too.


 * I am right here in thinking that you seem to be saying that the US, Canada etc actively include the Channel Islands in their own localised definition of British Isles - and that it is up to me to prove that there has been a "global shift" from that? My reply is to ask, were is the evidence that those countries do include the CI's? Surely if they use it at all, they would use the technical geographical definition of British Isles being an archipelago, because the term, outside of the British Isles, is mostly used scientifically in the various professions? Please don't be fooled by Wikipedia on this - it says "by tradition can also include the Channel Islands", without being able to supply any reference, entirely as a compromise of its own (essentially via Original Research). For years the compromise favoured the term being heralded as "offensive to many Irish" at the top of the intro, in bold in the footnotes - wherever that idea could be placed, or was attempted to be placed. That was essentially a 'compromise' because of the people who favoured substituting all instances of 'British Isles' with obscure terms most people have never heard of like "Atlantic archipelago'. for me, that is beyond Wikimedia's remit. In my experience, those who have insisted that the Channel Islands absolutely must be included in the definition (which of course both splits and politicise the definition, weakening it's credibility) are the people who favour avoiding the term, and instead using an alternative term like Atlantic Isles only when it absolutely has to be used. I spent some time making a diagram once which showed both 'CI' and 'non-CI' definitions within it, and it was reverted by 3RR with the various anti-disruption page-locks at the time keeping the article from change. That's how bad it all was. Unfortunately it just happens to cover one of Wikipedia's most notorious areas - UK/IRE crossover, with elements of wider UK nationalism thrown in. The CI inclusion/exclusion issue effectively stopped the long-worked 'usage guideline' from being completed, which was another bonus for those who do not want WP to use the term.


 * Just to give balance - making it all even worse was a sockfarm of 'uber-British' accounts, which sometimes tried to use the word wherever they could, and as politically as possible.


 * Obviously, the only possible way around all this is to include as fair an explanation of the term's varied use as possible (and imo, in Wikipedia to have a MOS guideline preventing over-use). The problem for Wiktionary is how far it goes down the explanatory road. Dictionaries are notoriously hard to produce.


 * One last thing - Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and to me this place essentially seems to be a shortened version of it. Why else include these terms here? There was always a fine line between the two entities - some people may remember Pears etc. Plain dictionaries tend to be more curtailed and inclusive (a limitation for all but the multi-volumes), and one would expect Wiktionary to aim for more than that - but for what? Matt Lewis (talk) 03:37, 10 March 2012 (UTC)