What is the difference between

 

England and Britain

(or Great Britain)? Three countries make up Great Britain:

England, Scotland and Wales. So England is part of Great

Britain, and a Scotsman (a person of Scottish origin) is

British, too. A person born in Wales is Welsh, and they

are British, too. Northern Ireland is part of the United

Kingdom, or “the UK”. So the UK is made up of four

countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern

Ireland, the last of which is not part of Great Britain. The

formal name of the country is the “United Kingdom of

Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, but in everyday

speech Britain is often used to mean the UK, though, as

you have seen, this is not perfectly correct. The word

“great” was added to “Britain” several hundred years ago

, in the Middle Ages, when the English kings had lands in

 what is now France, and a certain part of it was called

Britanny. To avoid confusion, they added the word

“great” to the name of the land which was larger.