Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2015-12/Country name policy for UK

Country name policy for UK

Voting on: Policy on correct noun and adjectival noun etc for the United Kingdom, in contrast with Britain to ensure greater clarity and accuracy when referring to the nation or a region.

Vote started: 00:00, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Vote ends: 23:59, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Vote created: 98.122.20.56 20:50, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Discussion: Many entries on wiktionary appear to confuse the terms 'British', 'UK' and 'Britain'. For many people, of course, 'Britain' is shorthand for the United Kingdom (in full, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Technically and logically speaking, however, that name is ambiguous - there is an island called Great Britain, which is also often shortened to 'Britain'. We might as well refer to the whole of the UK as 'Northern Ireland', as that would be just as ambiguous.

Examples:

The correct adjective for the government that runs the United Kingdom is "the British government". "UK government" is an acceptable alternative, though it is weaker because the citizens are not known as "UKish" or "UKian". I would suggest in this instance that we give preference to "British government".
The same holds true for other usage of the same. There already exists an adjectival noun for people of the United Kingdom, or things relating to the country: "British". "UK-ish" and "United Kingdom-ish" do not exist.
moot - As one example amongst many, this entry suggests that the specific usage of the word is "current in Britain". In fact, the usage is current in the whole of the United Kingdom, and not just on the island of Britain. Looking at the wikicode we can see that the actual code even uses "UK": {{context|current in|_|UK|rare|_|in the|_|US|lang=en}} The UK tag is then rewritten as 'Britain', which then refers to a disambiguation page. By comparison, the link for "US" prints as "US" and links directly to an article about the US.

Presumably, regional variations on language such as perhaps Texas, or the Southern States of the USA, or Alberta, have templates set up for them, just as regional templates likely exist for Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Ulster, Munster, London, Essex, England, Scotland, Wales, Scottish Highlands... etc etc. If language variation is specific to those regions, then that should be noted. There may be cases in which language usage is specific to the island of Britain, though I can't think of one, off the top of my head. In such cases, the usage template should point directly to the page for that region/island. On the other hand, if the language usage exists nationwide, then the template should redirect to the whole nation - not just a geographical region within that country.

That is more or less my proposal for discussion. I apologise if I have made any technical or policy error in this vote submission - I have never done it before, and I trust that some registered user or admin will happily fix any error that I have made. I look forward to reading further discussion.

Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2015-12/Country name policy for UK

Country name policy for UK

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