Talk:Anglo-Celtic Isles

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The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


This is a neolism by an editor who has been trying to assist in limiting the term British Isles from Wikipedia for years. There will certainly be a couple of (possibly quite old) polemical texts suggesting it is should be used instead of 'British Isles' - but it cannot be enough to put these kind of unused terms into here imo.

The editor also added this line to the 'British Isles' entry, "Other turns of phrase are increasingly preferred, such as "Britain and Ireland", which I've just removed from the entry. 'Britain and Ireland' I am also putting up for deletion, as I'm not sure it's dictionary stuff - though it has certainly been used to present the two countries.

There is actually almost no real evidence of "other terms being increasingly preferred". The examples of other terms where they do actually exist are too sporadically dated to draw any conclusion, and there are just too few of them out there. They exist mainly within polemics on their usage. The limited list of 'other-term' examples on Wikipedia has been stagnant for a long time. It is simply the truth that no other term has superceded 'British Isles' in common parlance, because their simply isn't a suitable one out there. 'British Isles' is a term that is in world-wide use every day, if not that much in Ireland - as I've put in the British Isles entry.

There are cases in Ireland however (such as maps), where 'Britain and Ireland' has been used instead of British Isles, but I'm not so sure they use it when discussing the archipelago. So it could just be combination of two words. It's not as obvious a deletion as 'Anglo-Celtic Isles', anyway.

The British Isles 'naming dispute' been a problem for years on Wikipedia, mainly because the encyclopedia (and now Wiktionary) is being used to 'push the river', and on other related 'nationalistic' issues to, like claiming Northern Ireland is "currently" a part of the UK - which Wiktionary embarrassingly did until I changed it today. We must all be more careful here on these more-encyclopedic type of entries. Whatever your take on it all, it just isn't right to use these kind of websites in this way.

So in short: 'Anglo-Celtic Isles' I feel is being promoted here in the hope that people will start to use it. If it was in any public use at all, it would surely have been linked from British Isles, and not just to it. If you Google it you will find (like the similar 'Atlantic Archipelago') that it is either a WP-page clone, or it is referring to the actual dispute, or some company or similar cultural thing. It is rarely if ever used as a casual replacement for 'British Isles'. Matt Lewis 04:14, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is well attested in Google Books and meets our WT:CFI. Nobody is forced to use it, but we have to keep it. —Stephen (Talk) 05:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This website is basically even more inclusive than Wikipedia then? Don't you have a policy on polemics? Theoretically this site could fill up with all kinds on stuff! A number of the 35 'books' use it in quotes. I suggest you need a section on using Google Books, and what that entails, esp in terms of publishing. The rest all appear to be about coins in pre-British history. I bet you a million tin disks I won't be able to keep it from being the 'increasingly-used alternative for British Isles'. Matt Lewis 01:24, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See WT:CFI. It's clearly attestable, and it seems to be idiomatic (unless you want to say it's SOP in the manner of British Isles). Nadando 01:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We're not a political site; we list words and idiomatic terms when they exist. I'm not a fan of racism or sexism but it doesn't mean I'm going to nominate those entries for deletion. Speedy keep, no deletion rationale. --Mglovesfun (talk) 14:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

kept -- Liliana 06:55, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]