InfoBritain

What's In a Name

This is not going to be a list of things typically British, such as baked beans, chocolate biscuits, people saying "mustn't grumble" and so on. But a web site called InfoBritain should be able to say what the word "Britain" refers to. This question opens up such a can of worms that it's tempting to change the name of the web site.

Britannia was the name given by the Romans to their northern province, which roughly corresponds with what is known as England today. Previously the island may have been known as Albion, a word which might derive from the Latin "Albus" meaning white, referring to the white cliffs on England's south coast. Some Mediterranean traders might have called Britain the Tin Islands, after the metal they came to the south west of the country to buy. However, these same Tin Islands or Cassirerides, could have been a mythic place created by jealous traders trying to obscure Britain's existence rather than give it a name. When the Romans left early in the fifth century the name Britannia, or Britain, remained, although the province itself broke up into many new territories as the native Celts struggled against an influx of Germanic settlers. Matters were made more complicated by the Celts and Germanics fighting amongst themselves. Many Romanised Britons left for the region of Brittany, and there were a few occasions when the term Great Britain was used to differentiate the little Britain of Brittany from the bigger Britain to the north.

Statue of Alfred the Great in Winchester

After the withdrawal of the Romans the territory of former Britannia spent hundreds of years broken into a bewildering mass of competing kingdoms. By the seventh century there were about a dozen kingdoms. By the ninth century there were basically two zones, the Celtic in the west, and the Germanic in the east. Scandinavian raiders then began to invade at the end of the eighth century, and eventually took over a great swath in the east of the country. The ninth century king of Wessex, Alfred and his successors, managed to work out a way of living relatively peacefully with the Scandinavians. At this time, confusingly, Britain became England. A tenth century chronicler said "Britain has now become England (Engla Land)."

History then followed its twists and turns through the Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor eras to the reign of Elizabeth the First, who died without an heir. James the Sixth of Scotland became James the First of England in 1603. James wanted to bring England and Scotland closer together, and proposed the name Great Britain for the combined kingdom. He also approved the design for the first Union flag. England and Scotland eventually become united in law by the Act of Union in 1707. With the inclusion of Ireland in 1800, "Britain" referred to the whole of the British Isles.

Some commentators suggest that a united Britain suited all involved states because it gave the manpower to resist France in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and then to build an empire. Scotland's entry into the union in 1707 was encouraged by the feeling that Scots would share in the overseas commercial gains which until then were being enjoyed by England alone. But when the empire was dissolved in 1947 Britain began to switch back to an earlier incarnation. The southern Irish Republic had already broken away in 1922. Movements for greater autonomy gathered strength in Wales and Scotland. Today there are regional assemblies for both Wales and Scotland. Now if someone says they are proud to be British it is hard to know what they mean. Do they mean they are proud to be English, or proud to be English, Scottish, Welsh with a little bit of Irish thrown in? All of these countries are very different, and it is hard to picture someone feeling a proud sense of identification with them all.

There are some historians who predict the imminent break up of Britain, although ironically the individual states will probably be individual only under the wider European Union umbrella, to which the Republic of Ireland has already committed itself. First there was Britannia; then Britain became England, before becoming Britain again, and soon Britain might disappear altogether, and England will return, in the place where Britannia once stood. Already the word Britain is falling out of use. In preparing this website, a search of internet keywords showed that most people refer to the country as the UK, or the United Kingdom. Britain as an all-encompassing name is disappearing. The kingdoms have returned.

National identity is always going to be a strange thing. Shakespeare, the greatest of English playwrights, knew how to play to the patriotic feelings of his lively audiences at the Globe. He also understood the vagueness of national identity. In Hamlet the Danish prince Hamlet is to be sent from Denmark to England, following an unfortunate murder. The King's farewell to Hamlet could easily sound rousing and patriotic:

The bark is ready, and the wind at help,

Th' associates tend, and everything is bent

For England

"For England!" repeats Hamlet grandly. At this point you can imagine a lot of cheering from the audience at the Globe . But as the King of Denmark then says, England at the time in which this play is set is virtually a province of Denmark. England "pays homage to us" says the King. Hamlet is being sent away from Denmark, when actually you get the feeling that he isn't going away at all. Instead he is going to another part of Denmark. Such is the way with countries it seems.

In 2001 the then foreign secretary Robin Cook gave a speech in which he suggested that chicken tikka masala was England's new national dish. There were also some TV adverts for McDonalds being shown at the time, publicising a new chicken tikka masala burger. In the adverts British people of Asian origin were singing the Alan Hull song Fog On the Tyne. "The fog on the Tyne is all mine" sang a young Asian man in a wobbly voice. Of course the fog on the Tyne cannot really belong to anyone. The fog drifts over the river and disappears in the sun. And yet it's only something that belongs to no one in particular than can belong to everyone. Britain to me is like the fog on the Tyne. Only a fog of this nature is free to drift across any barrier and be there in a reassuring way for us all. Nationalists would do well to remember that.