De monyms and de other monyms. by
Huinesoron
on 2016-03-16 09:35:00 UTC
Reply
There's actually no commonly-acceptable demonym for England, Wales, and either Ireland. What you've listed are the correct adjectives, but the traditional forms of the demonyms are 'Englishman', 'Welshman' etc, which for obvious reasons are going out of use. So we're stuck with 'English person' or, well, 'Briton'.
Scotland is a bit different, because you have 'Scot'. So a Scot is Scottish and comes from Scotland.
The concept of 'British' (and 'Britain' for that matter) is... somewhat under dispute.
*Does it refer to everyone from the British Isles, thus including the entirety of Ireland? That's sort of analogous to calling everyone from North America 'American' - it's correct, but you're going to upset people. (And throw in the fact that 'British Isles' only came into use when England conquered Ireland, to try and pull off a retroactive justification... yeah.)
*Does it mean anyone from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? I think this is probably the most common usage, but seems to be the least 'accurate' version.
*Does it mean anyone with British (=UK) citizenship, regardless of geographical location? That includes not only people who've moved away, but also people from the British Overseas Territories, such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. This one is absolutely and strictly accurate, in that they are officially defined as British by their passports - but is also really confusing, since it means you have multiple Caribbean islands occupied entirely by Britons.
*Or does it just mean people from the island of Great Britain, thus ignoring the Northern Irish altogether? Well... there's a bunch of people in Northern Ireland who'd love that! ^_~ And a bunch who'd hate it, because Northern Ireland.
Who even knows any more?
hS