This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the British Isles article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.
The term British Isles is a contentious issue. In order to better facilitate discussion of this issue, without swamping other matters, there is a specific talk page for matters relating to the name of this article. Your cooperation with keeping name-related matters on that page would be appreciated by other editors.
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References
The term British Isles is a contentious issue. Academic and other references concerning this controversy can be read here.
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Clarke, Donald (9 January 2016). "Saoirse Ronan being claimed by the UK not 'a compliment'". The Irish Times. Suchet followed these remarks with a patronising tweet featuring a link to the Wikipedia article on the British Isles. We do not know if he read as far as the following paragraph: 'The term British Isles is controversial in Ireland, where there are objections to its usage due to the association of the word British.'
Naming. Article should be written in the past tense
Latest comment: 12 days ago6 comments6 people in discussion
just so you know, The government of The ROI does not accept or use the term "British Isles" and to my knowledge, in any documentation between the ROI and the UK, the term is not used, due to it's political sensitivity, a fact also accepted by the UN. Furthermore, modern maps also no plonger use the term, so in reality, this article should be written in the past tense. ~2026-46965-11 (talk) 11:52, 28 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm certain that the only sources are negative space. "British Isles" has no official, inter-governmental or UN based standing. It's just a phrase out of historical usage - not even used on official maps. All official names tend to encompass national boundaries or use diplomatically neutral language. UK uses the "British Islands" which excludes Ireland. Ireland uses similar neutral phrases like these Islands, Great Britain and Ireland, etc. The UN does have its own convoluted notes on the islands' geography, and even it uses "British Isles" (just the once) in its historical context.
And all the evidence provided previously that the (Republic of) Ireland government, civil service departments and individuals do indeed use the term British Isles? No evidence has ever been provided that Ireland doesn't use the term other than a minister expressed an opinion once. Canterbury Tailtalk12:54, 14 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
There's a yellow box above which says "The term British Isles is a contentious issue. In order to better facilitate discussion of this issue, without swamping other matters, there is a specific talk page for matters relating to the name of this article".
I'm pointing this out in the spirit helping you find all the other people talking about this, but I have to say it took me a while to notice it, and this "contentious issue" is perhaps not as prominent as it should be on the British Isles article itself.
That's because this article is about the actual island group and we have entire separate articles that deal with the naming and terminology. The name of the island group is of fairly trivial importance compared to the history and geography, and the "contentious issue" is, compared to the length of the history of the islands and even the history of the terminology, a fairly recent and inconsequential blip. There's a whole paragraph about it in the lead and the etymology section is the first section in the article; that seems plenty prominent enough to me. WaggersTALK08:50, 21 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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