The full name used to be "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland"; now it's ".. Northern Ireland". It msut be awfully confusing for foreigners (who are ipso facto stupid anyway, as any Briton knows) to try and distinguish between Great Britain (it's OK for us to drop the "Great", but don't let us catch you doing it!), The British Isles, The UK, England (=England), England (=England + Wales), and so forth. And it's not that long since the monarch was the King of GB &(N)I and Emperor of India; the rest of the Empire, curiously, only qualified for "King".

Daphne Du Maurier ("Rebecca", "Jamaica Inn", the original story of "The Birds", etc.) wrote a novel in the seventies called "Rule Britannia", in which we (the UK) had gone bankrupt and been incorporated with (do you say "united into"?) the US. We were thenceforward to be known as "US-UK". I think this was intended as a sly joke on Ms DU M's part ("you suck"), but it was never explicitly referred to. I won't let on how it ended, but I dare say the Americans wouldn't be surprised and the British would be reasonably pleased.

Steve