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Great Britain

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Great Britain

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See also: Kingdom of Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain lies between Ireland and Scandinavia.
Geography
Location	Western Europe
Archipelago	British Isles
Area	80,823 sq mi (209,331 km2)
Rank	9th
Highest point	Ben Nevis (1344 m)
Country
United Kingdom
Home Nations	England Scotland Wales
Largest city	London
Demographics
Population	approximately 58,000,000 (as of 2006)[1]
Density	approx. 277 people/km²
Ethnic groups	Cornish, English, Scots, Welsh, others

Satellite Image of Great Britain

Great Britain (Scottish Gaelic: Breatainn Mhòr, Welsh: Prydain Fawr, Cornish: Breten Veur, Scots: Graet Breetain) is the larger of the two main islands of the British Isles, the largest island in Europe and the ninth-largest island in the world (Great Britain is also the third most populated island on earth). It is also the second richest island in the world (after Japan) with the world's 5th largest economy and 58 million people. It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe, with Ireland to the west, and makes up the largest part of the territory of the country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is surrounded by over 1,000^[2] smaller islands and islets.

England, Scotland and Wales are mostly situated on the island, along with their capital cities, London, Edinburgh and Cardiff respectively.

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Geographical definition

Main article: Geography of Great Britain

Further information: Geography of England, Geography of Scotland, and Geography of Wales

Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles. It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe, with Ireland to the west, and makes up the larger part of the territory of the United Kingdom. It is surrounded by 1000 smaller islands and islets. It occupies an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 square miles)^[3]

It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshū.^[4]

Great Britain stretches over about ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north–south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in the western and northern regions.

The English Channel is of geologically recent origins, having been dry land for most of the Pleistocene period. It is thought to have been created between 450,000 and 180,000 years ago by two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods caused by the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline, a ridge which held back a large proglacial lake in the Doggerland region, now submerged under the North Sea. The flood would have lasted several months, releasing as much as one million cubic metres of water per second. The cause of the breach is not known but may have been caused by an earthquake or simply the build-up of water pressure in the lake. As well as destroying the isthmus that connected Britain to continental Europe, the flood carved a large bedrock-floored valley down the length of the English Channel, leaving behind streamlined islands and longitudinal erosional grooves characteristic of catastrophic megaflood events.^[5]

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Terminology

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Etymology

Main article: Britain (name)

The earliest known name of Great Britain is Albion (Ἀλβίων) or insula Albionum, from either the Latin albus meaning white (referring to the white cliffs of Dover, the first view of Britain from the continent) or the "island of the Albiones", first mentioned in the Massaliote Periplus and by Pytheas.^[6]

The name Britain descends from the Old French Bretaigne (whence also Modern French Bretagne) and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond). These are derived in turn from the Latin name Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons. This name was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. It is derived from the travel writings of the ancient Greek Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far North as Thule (probably Iceland).

The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani.^[6] Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, Britain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic speaking inhabitants of Ireland. ^[7] The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans.

It has also been claimed that the name derives from Breta, a pre-Roman British folk deity.

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Derivation of 'Great'

After the Old English period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae (circa 1136) refers to the island of Great Britain as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany.

The term Britain re-surfaces in Early Modern period, in the context of efforts toward unification of England and Scotland. In 1604, James I proclaimed himself "King of Great Britain".

Sources such as the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) define Great Britain as "England, Wales, and Scotland considered as a unit" and Britain as "an island that consists of England, Wales, and Scotland."

In Irish, Wales is referred to as An Bhreatain Bheag which means, literally, Little Britain. On the other hand, the closely-related language, Scottish Gaelic, uses the term, A'Bhreatainn Bheag, to refer to Brittany.

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Use of the term Great Britain

"Great Britain" refers to three quarters of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (UK). It refers only to the largest island within the union.

In 1975 the government affirmed that the term Britain, not Great Britain, could be used as a shortened form of the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]} British refers, however, to all citizens of the United Kingdom, Welsh, Scottish, English and Northern Irish.^{[citation needed]}

The abbreviations GB and GBR are used in some international codes as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Examples include: Universal Postal Union, the International Olympic Committee, international sports teams, NATO, the International Organization for Standardization, and other organisations. (See also country codes, international licence plate codes, and technical standards such as the ISO 3166 geocodes GB and GBR.)

On the Internet, .uk is used as a country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. A .gb top-level domain was also used to a limited extent in the past, but this is now effectively in abeyance because the domain name registrar will not take new registrations. Ireland has its own separate Internet code, .ie, which can be used in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

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Capital cities

• England: London
• Scotland: Edinburgh
• Wales: Cardiff

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Other major settlements

See also: List of largest United Kingdom settlements by population

• England: Birmingham, Blackpool, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Colchester, Coventry, Derby, Doncaster, Exeter, Gloucester, Huddersfield, Hull, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Preston, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland, Swindon, Wolverhampton, York.
• Scotland: Aberdeen, Ayr, Dumfries, Dundee, Glasgow, Inverness, Paisley, Perth, Stirling
• Wales: Newport, Swansea, Wrexham.

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See also

• List of islands of England
• List of islands of Scotland
• List of islands of Wales

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References

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External links

• Interactive map of Great Britain
• Coast – the BBC explores the coast of Great Britain
• Administrative map of Great Britain – from the Ordnance Survey; various formats
• BBC Nations
• The British Isles
• CIA Factbook United Kingdom