Britain is from Britannia. It is the Latin term for Scotland England and Wales and if it offends those of independent local nationalist sensibilities it is because it represents quintessentially the Roman imperial prerogative of lumping "all that stuff up there" into one geographic name.
UK refers to the incorporation of Scotland in 1707 and Ireland in 1801. Wales had fallen into English orbit in 1301.
Bretagne in France is a back-formation from the invasions of France in the 5th and 6th centuries. In a sense the word went north as Britannia under the Romans and came back to Gaul as Bretagne.
My Australian friend, descended from the Scots, comments that Britain is neither British nor great and that the United Kingdom is neither particularly united nor much of a kingdom. He refuses to refer to a collective entity but simply refers to England, Scotland, Wales, etc.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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