British Isles naming dispute

In British English usage, the toponym "British Isles" refers to a European archipelago consisting of Great Britain, Ireland and adjacent islands. However, the word "British" is also an adjective and demonym referring to the United Kingdom. For this reason, the name British Isles is avoided in Hiberno-English as such usage could be construed to imply continued territorial claims or political overlordship of the Republic of Ireland by the United Kingdom.

Proposed alternatives to renaming the British Isles to something more neutral include "Britain and Ireland", "Atlantic Archipelago", "Anglo-Celtic Isles", the "British-Irish Isles" and the Islands of the North Atlantic. In documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as "these islands".

To some, the dispute is partly semantic and the term is a value-free geographic one while, to others, it is a value-laden political one. The Crown dependencies of the Channel Islands may also for geo-political reasons be included in the British Isles, despite not being geographically part of the archipelago. Early variants of the term date back to Ancient Greek times; it fell into disuse for over a millennium, and was introduced into English in the late 16th or early 17th centuries by English and Welsh writers whose writings have been described as propaganda and politicised. The term became more resisted after the breakup of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1922.

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