[Talk-GB] GB does not include Northern Ireland

[Dan S]

Op ma 3 sep. 2018 om 19:06 schreef Toby Speight <T.M.Speight.90 at cantab.net>:
>
> >> Even in these days of Brexit, I don't think there's any movement for
> >> Northern Ireland to leave GB.  You've been misinformed!
>
> 0> In article <c5af5ac2-7cbc-77f1-f4c2-9066287fd075 at templot.com>,
> 0> Martin Wynne <URL:mailto:martin at templot.com> ("Martin") wrote:
>
> Martin> Northern Ireland is part of the UK but it's not part of GB.
>
> But UK is just an informal name for GB - The United Kingdom of Great
> Britain and Northern Ireland.  It even has "Northern Ireland" in the
> name.  GB without Northern Ireland would just be England, Scotland and
> Wales or the island of Britain.

Please allow me to differ: "UK is an informal name for GB" is not
completely correct. The naming of these islands is utterly confusing -
I blame history! This wikipedia page and the Venn diagram are useful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isles
So. The official name of the state is "The United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland". Often abbreviated to "UK". "Great
Britain", often abbreviated to "GB", is the name for that biggest
island within that state. HOWEVER, that doesn't settle the matter,
because "GB" is also used officially to refer to the UK (in
particular, via ISO3166).
So if we see the initials "GB" without any context, we can't work out
if the intention is to include NI or not - but in practice, people are
usually referring to the whole state, and often don't know there's any
difference.

Of course, all this terminological back-and-forth is pedantic and I'm
sorry to extend it, since the original issues are more important for
us. I repeat my call for the "talk-gb" moderators to update the
description on https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb to
explicitly say it's for all of the UK, if indeed it is. That way, we
have an anchoring point that could settle these discussions nicely...

Best
Dan