Britain (place name)


The name Britain originates from the Common Brittonic term *Pritanī and is one of the oldest known names for Great Britain, an island off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The terms Briton and British, similarly derived, refer to its inhabitants and, to varying extents, the smaller islands in the vicinity. "British Isles" is the only ancient name for these islands to survive in general usage.

Etymology

"Britain" comes from Britannia~Brittania, via Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne, possibly influenced by Old English Bryten, probably also from Latin Brittania, ultimately an adaptation of the Common Brittonic name for the island, *Pritanī.
An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as Πρεττανική, "The Britannic ", and nēsoi brettaniai, "Britannic islands", with Pretani being a Celtic word that might mean "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk", referring to body decoration.
The modern Welsh name for the island is Prydain. This may demonstrate that the original Common Brittonic form had initial P- not B- and -t- not -tt-. This may be explained as containing a stem *prit-, meaning "shape, form", combined with an adjectival suffix. This leaves us with *Pritanī.

History

Written record

The first known written use of the word was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original P-Celtic term. It is believed to have appeared within a periplus written in about 325 BC by the geographer and explorer Pytheas of Massalia, but no copies of this work survive. The earliest existing records of the word are quotations of the periplus by later authors, such as those within Diodorus of Sicily's history, Strabo's Geographica and Pliny's Natural History. According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē, which is treated a feminine noun. Although technically an adjective it may have been a case of noun ellipsis, a common mechanism in ancient Greek. This term along with other relevant ones, subsequently appeared inter alia in the following works:
As seen above, the original spelling of the term is disputed. Ancient manuscripts alternated between the use of the P- and the B-, and many linguists believe Pytheas's original manuscript used P- rather than B-. Although B- is more common in these manuscripts, many modern authors quote the Greek or Latin with a P- and attribute the B- to changes by the Romans in the time of Julius Caesar; the relevant, attested sometimes later, change of the spelling of the word in Greek, as is also sometimes done in modern Greek, from being written with a double tau to being written with a double nu, is likewise also explained by Roman influence, from the aforementioned change in the spelling in Latin. For example, linguist Karl Schmidt states that the "name of the island was originally transmitted as Πρεττανία ... as is confirmed by its etymology".
According to Barry Cunliffe:

Roman period

Following Julius Caesar's expeditions to the island in 55 and 54 BC, Britania was predominantly used to refer simply to the island of Great Britain. After the Roman conquest under the Emperor Claudius in AD 43, it came to be used to refer to the Roman province of Britain, which at one stage consist of part of the island of Great Britain south of Hadrian's wall.

Medieval

In Old English or Anglo-Saxon, the Graeco-Latin term referring to Britain entered in the form of Bryttania, as attested by Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius' Seven Books of History Against the Pagans.
The Latin name Britannia re-entered the language through the Old French Bretaigne. The use of Britons for the inhabitants of Great Britain is derived from the Old French bretun, the term for the people and language of Brittany, itself derived from Latin and Greek, e.g. the Βρίττωνες of Procopius. It was introduced into Middle English as brutons in the late 13th century.

Modern usage

There is much conflation of the terms United Kingdom, Great Britain, Britain, and England. In many ways accepted usage allows some of these to overlap, but some common usages are incorrect.
The term Britain is widely used as a common name for the sovereign state of the United Kingdom, or UK for short. The United Kingdom includes three countries on the largest island, which can be called the island of Britain or Great Britain: these are England, Scotland and Wales. However the United Kingdom also includes Northern Ireland on the neighbouring island of Ireland, the remainder of which is not part of the United Kingdom. England is not synonymous with Britain, Great Britain, or United Kingdom.
The classical writer, Ptolemy, referred to the larger island as great Britain and to Ireland as little Britain in his work, Almagest. In his later work, Geography, he gave these islands the names Ἀλουίωνος, Ἰουερνίας, and Mona, suggesting these may have been native names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest. The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Great Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island called Great Britain.
After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae refers to the
island of Great Britain as Britannia major, to distinguish it from Britannia minor, the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by Celtic migrants from the British Isles. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, and James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee". As noted above it was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland".
The term Great Britain later served to distinguish the large island of Britain from the French region of Brittany. With the Acts of Union 1707 it became the official name of the new state created by the union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland, forming the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, the name of the country was changed to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, recognising that Ireland had ceased to be a distinct kingdom and, with the Acts of Union 1800, had become incorporated into the union. After Irish independence in the early 20th century, the name was changed to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is still the official name. In contemporary usage therefore, Great Britain, while synonymous with the island of Britain, and capable of being used to refer politically to England, Scotland and Wales in combination, is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole. For example, the term Team GB and Great Britain were used to refer to the United Kingdom's Olympic team in 2012 and this usage created controversy as some interpreted it as excluding Northern Ireland..
The demonym for a citizen of the United Kingdom is British.