Flanders & Swann:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdY1Y5XNJBY

I wonder what people from Britain think when they hear foreigners say 'England' instead of Britain.

Something along the lines of what Dutch people think when they hear foreigners say ‘Holland’ instead of ‘The Netherlands’ (German people do this all the time). Some care, some don’t. Instead of obstructing the conversation just to make a point, most choose to ignore it because they understood what was meant.

Something along the lines of what Dutch people think when they hear foreigners say ‘Holland’ instead of ‘The Netherlands’ (German people do this all the time).

Yeah, it does not bother me that much. But as you may know, many people in Britain (Welsh and Scots) are not that fond of the English. They feel themselves Welsh or Scottish first, and British second. So they often feel offended when someone tells them they are from England.
One example of total ignorance. A Dutch tv presenter said the following: "The happiest people in the whole of England live on the Scottish Shetland and Orkney Islands". I could not believe my ears.

Watching a lot of BBC, I notice they always talk about 'Britain' even when it concerns something in England (except when they talk about English institutions like NHS England). It is more inclusive. I believe the rest of the world should follow this example.

An interesting paper called 'Pride not prejudice across the nations of Britain': http://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BritishFutureSce...

I believe the rest of the world should follow this example.

This usage may be imprecise and can be confusing, so it’s certainly not recommended for journalistic or scientific texts. In colloquial usage (outside the UK), however, it is too widespread to be likely to disappear in the near future—regardless of your valiant awareness campaign. You can probably see where this comes from: In many contexts (outside the UK), the distinction England/Great Britain/United Kingdom is not relevant because only one of these entities is discussed (typically the UK), so there can be no confusion. In this case, speakers of several languages just pick the shortest term. And as you noted yourself, confusion only arises when someone (e.g. you) deliberately misunderstands this usage and tries to teach others how to avoid a non-existent problem. I assure you that, if people felt that using ‘England’ to refer to the UK led to noticeable confusion, they would stop doing so. But they don’t.

It works both ways, I've seen tourists from Europe being ignorant about the US.

As R said, normally there is no confusion because when folks say England or Britain they are talking about England. If they mean Wales and Scotland they use those words.

Merchants who depend on foreign tourists ignore these slips, just as merchants in the US generally ignore it when tourists from Europe use the wrong word.

Some of this may just be sloppy language. Don't know if it's due to changing educational standards or just gradual changes in the language, but I frequently hear TV professionals using bad grammar and words that aren't the best choice.

And some may be for snappier headlines. "Holland's Got Talent" is a better title than "The Netherlands Got Talent".

I think you are correct on the headlines issue. Ever wondered why so many Dutch and Scandinavians speak English? Well that is because we subtitle foreign movies and TV shows (most of them being American or British). Most southern European countries (Spain, Italy, etc) do not. They synchronise. I think listening to spoken English and simultaneously reading subtitles in your native language helps tremendously. Unless the subtitles are incorrect, of course:

Spot the error! Sloppy indeed... This happens all too often in this bloody country.

I might be overreacting here

Yup. You know perfectly well what someone is telling you if she says (in Dutch or German or French or …): ‘I’ve never been to England’. This means that the linguistic convention—‘England’ by default refers to the UK—works in those languages. Everybody, including you, gets the intended meaning. So, why would you want to impose a different convention and try to ‘educate’ others? Linguistic symbols (e.g. words) are more or less arbitrary anyway: It doesn’t really matter whether we call the United Kingdom ‘the United Kingdom’, ‘England’, ‘Albion’ or ‘Gnushty’—as long as everybody gets the intended meaning. That’s the case. It might be unfortunate that the colloquial naming convention in some languages (UK = England) conflicts with a naming convention that’s used in other contexts (UK ≠ England), but these contexts seldom overlap and misunderstandings rarely arise (and if they do, they can usually be sorted out quickly). This means that the convention you suggest is actually worse than the one in place: Instead of being able to say ‘Engeland’, people would have to say ‘Groot-Brittannië’, which is longer and more difficult to spell, without much added benefit in everyday language (excluding precision for precision’s sake and the satisfaction of having avoided confusion that wasn’t even there in the first place). So, what I’m trying to say is: Understand that in different linguistic contexts, different things matter (most)—for instance brevity and simplicity in colloquial language or precision in scientific language. No one asks you to ever say ‘Engeland’ if you find this all too brief and simple, but I don’t see a valid reason to foist your discomfort with a perfectly normal linguistic convention on others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

Now, what about the use of “America” to refer just to the USA?

Clearly this is a European forum (and I don't even know if I should capitalize that, or now if I should put an "s" instead of a "z" in capitalize, lol).

Here in the U.S., I would bet that an exceedingly small percentage of the population knows the correct usage of England, Britain, United Kingdom, or Commonwealth for that matter. We're that isolated and provincial. In fact, most of the population can't distinguish between Scottish, Welsh, English, Australian, and South African accents. They are all "British accents." It's pretty revealing. But it's not because they are sloppy or stupid, it's because they simply don't know any better and have never had reason to educate themselves on the matter. You don't go out and learn particle physics just because one day you might run into a particle physicist.

And worst of all, here in the U.S. most people don't bat an eye, or even recognize an issue, when the country is referred to "America". We are, after all, Americans. You just have to watch "Team America: World Police" to understand that. :)

I can appreciate why you find the erroneous usage irksome, but it's your damn fault for having such a complicated geopolitical nomenclemature. :P

Indeed, it is Great Britain which includes Scotland... but not Northern Ireland. Just plain "Britain", without the "Great", is, I think, just England and Wales.

So I would think that, since people who mistakenly say England are referring to the political unit with an army, navy, and postage stamps, it's "the UK", rather than "Britain", or even "Great Britain", that they should be saying.

But then I became aware of the different meanings. Once you know the difference, it is hard to fall back to your incorrect habit (at least for me).

Maybe you also need to get aware what “correct” means in the context of word use. ;-)
Words are just symbols which stand for ideas or objects in the physical world. Person A wants to talk about a certain object “O” and uses the symbol “X” to represent it in spoken or written language. Person B hears the symbol “X” and instantly thinks of the object “O”, just as A meant it. This was then a successful talk, because A and B understood each other perfectly well.
So should this be automatically “incorrect” just because there is a person C that does not connect “O” and “X” in the same way? As user R. already pointed out in a post above: it’s usually actually C who is the troublemaker because he deliberately tries to interfere with established and well understood conventions.

Well, that depends. Foreigners saying 'England' when they mean Britain might understand each other. But once that persons speaks to a British person, than that person is the troublemaker.

If one uses words which can be misunderstood (or even offending) in a CERTAIN context, this can of course be a problem. No one is arguing about that I guess.

But you generalize. You just throw around the words “right” and “wrong”, but they are not clear as you wish them to be. The words you are talking about are “right” and “wrong” according to YOUR specific knowledge or a specific source – or even a whole country. But that does not mean that these definitions are relevant for everybody in every context, past, present and future. That’s not how language works.

Also, I am pretty sure that your own language is full of the “ignorance” you assign to others. Have you checked every word you use back to it’s roots hundreds or thousands of years ago and have you checked if they are “right” and unambiguous in every context? Probably not! You just assume correct usage through how you hear others talk and what you have learned and read. And through exactly that process others learn to say England and Holland and so on.
Words are no laws of nature – they change all the time. And yes, this can mean that old “errors” become the new “right”. Happens since thousands of years.
You can’t just pick one option and declare it “right”. That goes even for dictionaries. What do you think they list? They list accepted meanings among certain people at the time the dictionary was written. But since language changes all the time, people might move away from the meaning of the dictionary entry and then at some point the dictionary simply would have to change and remove that old meaning or deem it “out-dated”.

There is nothing wrong with nudging people in the right direction, when you notice a usage of words which can be problematic. I actually do that all the time myself. But always mind the context and the conventions in this context. Then you don’t get all worked up about “wrong” usage, because you understand it might not really be wrong, but just “different” from your own usage.

Then you don’t get all worked up about “wrong” usage, because you understand it might not really be wrong, but just “different” from your own usage.

Since England and Britain are proper nouns, even if one disdains prescriptivism in general, the terms right and wrong do apply, because those words are names, like the names of people, or like trademarks.

Of course, there are exceptions even to this generalization.

So I'm going to open up the really big can of worms associated with this topic.

Thus, in English, "the Americas" is a body of land that includes North America, Central America, and South America. In French, the term for that same body of land is "Amèrique", and something similar is true for other Romance languages, including Spanish.

At one time, decades ago now, the official name of Brazil was "Los Estados Unidos do Brasil".

The official names of a few countries are, or were:

The Dominion of Canada
The Commonwealth of Australia
République Française (The Republic of France, lit. French Republic)
The United States of America
The Union of South Africa
Los Estados Unidos do Brasil (The United States of Brazil)

The pattern is clear; it is <form of government> of <name of country>.

So these names referred to Canada, Australia, France, America, South Africa, and Brazil respectively.

At least, this suits English speakers quite well, and makes perfect sense to them. America is one country, and the Americas are two continents linked by an isthmus.

But in the Romance languages, the word for the Americas is their cognate to "America". This causes a great deal of confusion, and has led some people to claim that the conventional English usage of "America" for the United States of America is in some way bigoted or exclusionary or ignorant and so on.

One way to reply is to note that neither Jamaica nor Ontario nor Guyana are part of "British Columbia". And what about the country that dares to call itself Colombia?

Because Columbia is also a name for the lands discovered by Columbus - the Americas - as witness its use by Americans - the song "Hail Columbia", the name of CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Right, I noticed the pattern of the official names. You are right. We should call a country like the citizens of that country call it. Most Americans say 'America', so we call it America. Britons call their country 'Britain', so we should call it Britain. And if there exists a Dutch, French, German, etc translation of that name, well, than they should use that word (ideally speaking). I rarely hear an English person say 'England', always Britain. Quite funny actually, even when they talk about a typical English landscape they call it a 'British landscape'.

Screenshot from an official U.S. propaganda film:

It is like saying 'Texas' instead of America. Still no Briton has shed his/her light on this subject. I wonder what they think.

Most American's might not be clear on British geopolitics, and I doubt that most could name the constituent parts that make up the UK.

Even so, I think that few confuse England with Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. My general observation is that most Americans think of them as being separate places, even though they might not be able to describe the political arrangements between them or be able to point to them on a map.

Since England and Britain are proper nouns, even if one disdains prescriptivism in general, the terms right and wrong do apply, because those words are names, like the names of people, or like trademarks.

Yes, but whether or not the “correct” names matter is still a matter of context. No one is arguing that for example a shopping website could offer something like “America” as entry for the country field. That would be wrong. But that does not that people can’t talk of “Americans” for “citizens of the United States of America” when the context clearly shows that the former can only stand for the latter.

I am with you on that. But I very much disgree with the argument that people who use the right names are troublemakers. That is not the problem.

Just to further stir things up I should point out that the only people in Great Britain who can legitimately call themselves 'Britons' are the Welsh and the Cornish. The others are all just foreign invaders.

Andre

The history and pre-history of Britain is filled with successive waves of migration from the mainland — each pushing aside or merging with those who were already there. Neanderthals were likely the first human inhabitants.

And please stop calling people from the USA “Americans”—as if Canadians and Mexicans, not to mention everyone in South and Central America, are not also Americans, i.e. living on the American continent.

USAers tend to be rather -centric, but in this case the RotW can take some of the blame.

If people from the USSR (aka CCCP) were known as “Soviets”, we can call USAers “Statesers” or “Uniteds”. “Statesers” is my pick, as, after all, the USA is well-known as “The States”. Fortunately, in this era of equal sexes, “Statesmen” is a no-go.

In 1797 President John Adams called the USA "America" in his inaugural address. It's been in use for hundreds of years so I wouldn't count on it changing.

Usians?

Statesiders.

USers, maybe.

Yankees would be good too, but the baseball team by the same name has already grabbed the dot-com domain. There's no turning back once that happens.

As for those (North) Americans just across the border, I thought it was already settled — they're Canucks.

I think Yankee is the only real possibility among those listed, although to many it suggests someone from the northeast.

I looked in a Thesaurus but didn't find much.

The Wikipedia page about alternate USA names said "no alternative to 'American' is common in English."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_United_States_citizens

Thylacine: USers, maybe. Yankees would be good too, but the baseball team by the same name has already grabbed the dot-com domain. There's no turning back once that happens.

Yankees may be claimed, but I always call them Septics

Incidentally, to return to the original topic, just as the fact that the people of the United States are called American reinforces the use of America for the nation, and not for the Americas, the confusion between England and the whole United Kingdom is somewhat reinforced by the usual job title of a certain individual residing in England.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second is usually referred to as the Queen of England, not the Queen of Britain, the Queen of the United Kingdom, or the Queen of the British Commonwealth of Nations, though she reigns over all the places those names include.

Of course, the historical root of that is simple enough; England, with its royal house, conquered and ruled over Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Which is the real historic reason that Britain and England sometimes get confused.

I mean, there's another part of the world that includes the national homelands of the Uighurs and the Tibetans, and yet we just call it China - of course, it calls itself China too (sort of... it calls itself China in English; its word for itself in Chinese is different), which makes the situation somewhat different from that of the United Kingdom.

Thus, just as when dealing with the People's Republic, the people you will be negotiating with will usually be Chinese, with Uighurs and Tibetans and Yi and Mongols and so on not getting a lot of input, at least historically, when negotiating with Britain, it would be Englishmen one would be talking to, with the Welsh and the Scots just having to put up with whatever the English decided. And what with the Netherlands being so close to Britain, they may have had enough dealings with it that the cognate of England might even be their language's word for Britain.