{"id":6230,"date":"2023-02-08T18:38:41","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T18:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6230"},"modified":"2023-02-08T18:38:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T18:38:44","slug":"the-british-islands-arent-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6230","title":{"rendered":"The British Islands Aren&#8217;t English"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Aeons (well perhaps not quite) an ancient Greek (not&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ptolemy\">Ptolemy<\/a>&nbsp;although he wrote it down on his map) rocked up on these misty islands and after overcoming the initial language barrier asked \u201cWell, who are you\u201d. \u201cWe\u2019re the&nbsp;<em>Prydain<\/em>\u201d replied his hosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And thus British Islands, overlooking the fact that Ireland was inhabited by a different branch of the Celts. Of course Ptolemy later used the names Hibernia and Albion, and an awful lot of wasted bits would be saved if those had stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for better or worse, it didn&#8217;t stick. But also it wasn&#8217;t the English who invented the term; it was widely used amongst geographers a thousand years before the Saxons invented England (to appease the Angles otherwise we&#8217;d be called Sexland). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But to those who like to gloss over 1,500 years of history, it can easily seem like a conspiracy to claim ownership by the English. Which tends to overlook that everyone has been trying to seize power over all the islands; and it was the Scottish who succeeded in the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if we were to translate &#8220;British Islands&#8221; into modern English it would be &#8220;Celtic Islands&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"927\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?resize=695%2C927&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6061\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?resize=768%2C1025&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?resize=1151%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1151w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?resize=1535%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1535w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?w=1550&amp;ssl=1 1550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-entering-the-great-hall.jpeg?w=1390&amp;ssl=1 1390w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Entering The Great Hall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aeons (well perhaps not quite) an ancient Greek (not&nbsp;Ptolemy&nbsp;although he wrote it down on his map) rocked up on these misty islands and after overcoming the initial language barrier asked \u201cWell, who are you\u201d. \u201cWe\u2019re the&nbsp;Prydain\u201d replied his hosts. And thus British Islands, overlooking the fact that Ireland was inhabited by a different branch of <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6230' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[6,13,3],"tags":[2130,107,2131,419,30],"class_list":["post-6230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-humour","category-politics","tag-albion","tag-british","tag-british-islands","tag-ireland","tag-uk","category-6-id","category-13-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mstdn.social\/@grumpygrimnir\/109830571695972423","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1Cu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6232,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230\/revisions\/6232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}