Great Britain From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Modern use of the term Great Britain
Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain. Politically, it may refer to the whole of England, Scotland and Wales, including their smaller offshore islands.^[34] It is not technically correct to use the term to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom which includes Northern Ireland, though the Oxford English Dictionary states "...the term is also used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom."^[35][36]
Similarly, Britain can refer to either all islands in Great Britain, the largest island, or the political grouping of countries.^[37] There is no clear distinction, even in government documents: the UK government yearbooks have used both Britain^[38] and United Kingdom.^[39]
GB and GBR are used instead of UK in some international codes to refer to the United Kingdom, including the Universal Postal Union, international sports teams, NATO, and the International Organization for Standardization country codes ISO 3166-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, whilst the aircraft registration prefix is G.
On the Internet, .uk is the country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. A .gb top-level domain was used to a limited extent, but is now deprecated; although existing registrations still exist (mainly by government organizations and email providers), the domain name registrar will not take new registrations.
In the Olympics, Team GB is used by the British Olympic Association to represent the British Olympic team. The Olympic Council of Ireland claims to represent the whole island of Ireland, and Northern Irish sportspeople may choose to compete for either team,^[40] most choosing to represent Ireland.^[41]