As a non-Brit living in England, this YT video has previously helped me better understand the complexities. It’s from 2011 so a bit outdated with references to the EU and The Queen.
But there are still so many inconsistencies. e.g. why is the combined Olympic Team referred to as ‘Team GB’ and not ‘Team GB&NI’ or ‘Team UK’
Likewise, the RSGB covers more than just GB.
Searching for the United Kingdom, this is what is returned from the official ISO site:
(https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search )
Go figure!
73 Ed.
Probably have to dig back through at least forty years(*) of ISO (and related) history to stand half a chance of beginning to figure it…
(*) or at least back to the creation of the “.uk” top level domain.
That’s a really good video but isn’t quite right. It starts by saying that the UK consists of four co-equal and sovereign nations. This is not correct - sovereignty lies solely with the Westminster Parliament. It gave Scotland it’s parliament back in 1999 and could take it away again. If Scotland was sovereign the SNP would have held another independence referendum.
As a geographical term Great Britain is the largest island but as a political term (and I think most used meaning) it means England, Scotland and Wales i.e. including all the islands.
As already mentioned it’s also a little out of date - Barbados is no longer a Commonwealth Realm but became a republic in 2021.
I’m not sure why they are changing it Rick @M0LEP , I imagine there will be a Facebook post explaining it somewhere, but I’m not going to look for it.
Please can SOTA stay as-is Andy @MM0FMF …! 
Thanks 
73, Simon
Has POTA taken leave of its senses? It would appear so! I can well imagine that one person could think this was a good idea, but cannot believe that any group of people discussed it and came to that view!
One of the reasons we realised we needn’t get too concerned about the prefix stuff in SOTA is that even if the callsigns no longer explicitly determine the DXCC, the programme references still do! POTA would have that bonus too - but appears to be throwing it away!
I think we can generally agree that using the best-known / most associated AR prefix to describe a SOTA Association and attach to its references, has worked incredibly well over the 22 year history of the scheme. It is therefore unsurprising that many subsequent OTA schemes have followed suit - and I presume that SOTA wasn’t the first to do this either.
Madness!
I believe it was just called Britain before 
joined.
One of the things that annoys some people is the use of the term “Great”. Geographically it means the biggest one, so Great Britain means the biggest island of the British Isles. Of course people twist that meaning to use great as best or better. So there has been a lot of use of Great Britain as “better than all you others” when meaning the politically entity.
It’s a real minefield as using the wrong word by accident can trigger a lot of complaints. There again there are some people who use the wrong word deliberately as a dog-whistle to people with similar views to themselves.
So I’m British by fact of where I live, English by birth and Scottish-American by descent. Just call me Andy and you’ll be accurate enough 
I wasn’t making a political statement, however it’s probably just as well you put an explanation on. Wouldn’t want to confuse the RoTW.
Grande Bretagne to differentiate from Bretagne i.e. Brittany.
Ptolemy referred to great Britain for the largest island and little Britain for the island of Ireland.
The explanation for the changes implies that some references use the ISO-3166 code and some use the callsign prefix. So they are trying to be consistent.
Yes indeed. For example, England has numerous pairs of villages a few miles apart, named in Anglo-Saxon times, eg Great Warley and Little Warley. The former being the original and the latter a new smaller ‘overspill’ settlement. No sense of superiority or inferiority was implied.
Not just in the UK, sorry GB!
85 SOTA summits listed as Grand, Grandes, Grande etc, eg F/AB-004 Gandes Jorasses, French Alps 4208m, which unsurprisingly has yet to be activated.
30 SOTA summits with Great in the name, eg W7M/FN-053 Great Northern Mountain, Montana 2653 m. Also unactivated.
