Should the date of foundation be 1 May 1707, 1 January 1801 or 12 April 1927? I think the latter, so we can use:

• Kingdom of Great Britain (Q161885) for period 1707–1801
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193) for period 1801–1927
• United Kingdom (Q145) after 1927

This way we can use bots to check if country of citizenship (P27) is correct, based on foundation date. Mushroom (talk) 11:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

6 December 1922 (Anglo-Irish Treaty) is also a possible date, however the name of the country wasn't formally changed until 12 April 1927. Mushroom (talk) 12:14, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It all depends whether you are talking about the thing or the name of the thing. The thing, Q145, dates in British law from 6 December 1922 (when, by royal proclamation of the then Head of State of both countries, the new Irish Constitution was adopted by both Irish and "British" parliaments). Technically, from this point, the whole of Ireland ceased to be governed from Westminster and the Irish Free State comes into existence (or gains legitimacy under British law). However, the Parliament of Northern Ireland immediately exercised its right to secede from the Irish Free State, which it did on 8 December (when the king replied to their Address). The border between the two states was ratified in December 1925 by acts in both Irish Free State and "British" parliaments. Irish jurists may argue that the Constitution of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann) Act 1922 has the force of law with effect from its approval on 25 October 1922 (since Article 2 provides for sovereignty to derive from the people of Ireland), from which one could argue that the Irish Free State began on that date, but that would not appear to have been the view at the time (when, in any event, it held itself to have the constitutional status of a Dominion within the "Community of Nations known as the British Empitre"). Apart from this short period of overlap in 1922, I believe that British and Irish experts would agree that the foundation of both the successor states occurred in 1922, and that should certainly be the year given in answer to any question about when the UK took on its current form as a territorial entity.--GrounderUK (talk) 22:46, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Limiting this item to post-1927 UK is a mistake. Item Q145 encompasses all three periods of the country's history noted above. This is similar to many countries which have various historical iterations which have specific items for those historical periods. Thus it is appropriate to say:

• United Kingdom (Q145) => inception (P571) => 1 May 1707 => P794 (P794) => Kingdom of Great Britain (Q161885)
• United Kingdom (Q145) => inception (P571) => 1 January 1801 => P794 (P794) => United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193)
• United Kingdom (Q145) => inception (P571) => 12 April 1927 => P794 (P794) => (item specific for UK since last name change)

This seems consistent with the infobox and other info in the articles about this item. If we choose to go the other way and have Q145 limited to post-1920s UK, than all of the Wikilinks need to move to a new item that encompasses 1707-present, since a quick read of those articles shows that they cover the whole period. I don't think that is a good idea, but instead I think having a new item that is specific to post-1927 would be much better to use. Josh Baumgartner (talk) 17:23, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How should the status of the various British overseas territories (Q46395) and Crown Dependencies (Q185086) be considered? Some of them have country (P17)United Kingdom (Q145). Should this item reference them with contains the administrative territorial entity (P150)? --Yair rand (talk) 02:28, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier, I noticed that the P17(country) property was pointing to this item itself (Q145). I removed the property, but Infovarius reverted the edit. However, I suspect that the property should be removed, after all. I don't think it makes sense to use the property of "Country" for a reflexive relation, and as far as I can see, there's nothing in the propertys's description which indicates that it should be, either. Also, the "self-reference" tag has been added to this page, if I understand the page's History log correctly. Therefore I suggest to remove this property. Any comments or opinions are welcome :-) Fred Johansen (talk) 21:05, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Johansen.fred:, look at some discussion: Property_talk:P17/Archive#Add_a_self-link_to_sovereign_states.3F which leads to bot request. I suppose that the main reason was to avoid some constraint violations. --Infovarius (talk) 08:50, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Infovarius: Thank you for the information. I have also seen that the page has been reverted back to your revision :-) However, I still feel that the validity of a self-reference here is difficult to understand, and that it seems to break the semantics of the relation. If I understand correctly, there's really a technical reason behind this convention. However, I note that the provided reasoning is "to provide an elegant way to describe that an item describes a sovereign state". I'm not sure why it should be impossible to use <instance-of> "sovereign state" (Q3624078) for this purpose instead? Perhaps this discussion ought to be moved to the property page as well... As an additional point, consider that the Domain of this property is defined to be constrained to geographical places, and although the (subclass/class) structure of "sovereign state" and "country" currently seems to be a bit messy (since "sovereign state" inherits from "state" which inherits from "country", which itself inherits from "region"), I think that good reasons might be given for viewing at least "sovereign state" as a non-physical entity. (It may very well have a geographical extent, but it might be a good idea to differ between physical geographical areas and conceptual entities - such as geo-political borders and (sovereign) states - the latter being more abstract and transient; not to mention that in Wikidata it should also be possible to describe facts of concurrent and competing geo-political boundaries through the same physical geographical area.) If one were to follow such a line of thought, then at least one conclusion would be that a sovereign state should not be seen as a geographical object per se, and therefore does not fall within the Domain of the country(P17) property, making such a self-reference semantically invalid. And if there are alternative technical approaches to take to solve the initial problem, shouldn't the semantic level take precedence? Fred Johansen (talk) 01:09, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The label was recently changed from United Kingdom to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I presume this was done to better distinguish the item from the items about the country's predecessors, but it is a mistake. This item covers both the country's current form as well as the country's history, going back across multiple times and periods. The en:United Kingdom article covers back to 1707, far further than the 1927 inception of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' official name. The official name should be noted with qualifier dates using official name (P1448). The label is more appropriate as the shorter 'United Kingdom' since it covers several official names and periods.

As I noted above in the talk about inception date, there are a couple of ways to go however. We can change this item to being limited to the 1927-present entity, but we would then have to create an appropriate 1707-present entity to attach en:United Kingdom to since that article is clearly not limited to the post-1927 period. I took a quick peek at a few other languages and they seem to likewise be about the 1707-present period, not just 1927-present. This would seem a huge undertaking and many of the links to Q145 would need to be changed (they aren't valid if Q145 only is 1927-present). I think a much better idea is that if an item restricted to 1927-present is required, it be created anew. I am not aware of any Wiki article that matches it, but that is fine, the new item need not have a Wiki article to go with it. Because this item is linked in so many places, the impact of the label change is significant, so for now I have reverted the label change until a consensus is reached on which way to go with this item. Josh Baumgartner (talk) 18:12, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything that particularly makes the United Kingdom the successor state of the Kingdom of Great Britain more than Kingdom of Ireland? If not, I suggest having this item start at 1801 with the label "United Kingdom", leave the current sitelinks (despite them having some content on earlier periods), and consider Kingdom of Great Britain (Q161885) and Kingdom of Ireland (Q215530) to be separate things. --Yair rand (talk) 20:54, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The United Kingdom was constitutionally formed in 1801. In reality it was a continuation of the British state before it, which also in reality was a continuation of the English state before it (with additional territory of course). Same parliament, constitutional conventions, institutions, etc. Bank of England is a obvious example. Rob984 (talk) 21:22, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

User:Rob984, it would be nice to be able to express this in data. "Main state of continuation" or "Persistent dominant state" perhaps? What is the persistent dominant state of Czechoslovakia? --BurritoBazooka (talk) 00:48, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with User:Yair rand. A person who had citizenship of the Kingdom of Ireland and lived there for their entire life, for example, cannot be regarded as someone who is from the United Kingdom in its current form or have anything to do with it. This is similar to a person who might have lived in some part of the Mongolian Empire, but can never be regarded as being from or having anything to do with the current form of Mongolia. How do historians treat these issues? Is there any current database of historic people and events which we can look at to see how this problem was solved before by others? A similar discussion is taking place here: Property talk:P27#Use of this property in the scope of history --BurritoBazooka (talk) 00:48, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Plast: mfl. Kan vi försöka enas om vilken label den här sidan ska ha på svenska? Det har ändrats några gånger nu! Det påverkar bokstavligen tiotusentals sidor på sv.Wikipedia, så en enighet måste till och det ganska raskt! Själv föredrar jag Storbritannien, det är det vi vanligen letar efter, dvs pommf. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 16:45, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Instämmer! Storbritannien känns mest rätt. Jag hajjar alltid personligen till när jag ser "Förenade kungariket" och kopplar inte alls det till Storbritannien. //Mippzon (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Storbritannien. Vill man skoja till det kan man kalla svensk-norska unionen de förenade konungarikena som åtskillnad mot det förenade konungariket. Men det var längesedan. Förenade konungariket/kungariket har en gravallvarligt formell sida och en skämtsida. Edaen (talk) 19:06, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jag brukar säga England jag, men Storbritannien är utan tvekan det rätta att använda på svenska före det EU-officiella Förenade kungariket. Det tar lång tid för språkbruket att ändra sig. /Rrohdin (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Definitivt Storbritannien. Även om jag aldrig lyckas stava rätt till det.--LittleGun (talk) 20:02, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Labeln skall vara samma som den svenska artikelns titel. På svwp namnger vi inte artiklarna efter de formella namnen utan efter den etablerade kortformen. Både Nationalencyklopedin och Utrikespolitiska Institutets Landguiden skriver Storbritannien och de källorna är vägledande för hur vi skall namnge länder. /Ascilto (talk) 20:54, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

+1.Yger (talk) 06:16, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Helt rätt, naturligtvis. Dessutom torde väl Förenade kungadömet vara ett batter alternativt begrepp än Förenade kungariket? Lindansaren (talk) 08:21, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Lindansaren: Jag har aldrig hört om "Förenade kungadömet" användas men valde nu att lägga till det som alias ändå. "Förenade kungariket" har jag definitivt hört. Det är inte ens ovanligt, men inte lika vanligt som "Storbritannien". -- Innocent bystander (talk) 09:11, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Kingdom" -> "kungarike" som "christendom"->"kristenhet". Kungadöme är inte riket utan styresformen. Förenade kungariket är ett kungadöme, alltså en monarki. Edaen (talk) 09:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Utfört

Summary in English: The Swedish label should be "Storbritannien". That is how Nationalencyklopedin (Q1165538) and Swedish Institute of International Affairs (Q3436158) name this nation. "Förenade kungariket" can stay as an alias.

-- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:02, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Innocent bystander:

"Förenade kungariket ... den politiska sammanslutningen mellan Storbritannien och Nordirland." [1]. För att förtydliga. Storbritannien som term refererar inte till både sig självt som den ena ingående parten, och samtidigt till hela den politiska sammanslutningen mellan Storbritannien och Nordirland. Det finns ett minimikrav att uppfylla om man gör anspråk på att försöka ge en definition av något, och det är att avgränsa vad det är man vill beskriva.

Problemet består inte i att låta "Storbritannien" fungera som en giltig kortform för nuvarande statsbildning i samtida skildringar. Problemet består i föresatsen om att varje konstellation bestående av Storbritannien, med eller utan hela Irland, enbart får använda just den beteckning som här anges att den skall syfta på avgränsningen; Storbritannien och norra Irland efter 1922.

Man kan inte inbilla sig att "äpplen och päron" skulle vara samma som "äpplen" och sedan förvånas över att äppelpajen inte längre smakar som den skall. Om man överger etablerade konventioner för att förlita sig på sin egen hemmasnickrade ad hoc-nomenklatur får man antingen ta konsekvenserna när det inte går ihop, eller fortsätta att gräva sig djupare ner i hålet. Bristen på stringens i vissa språkversioner är slående. -- Plast (talk) 11:09, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Men en label är inte en definition. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 12:01, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

NE skriver "Storbritannien består av de på den brittiska huvudön belägna England, Skottland och Wales samt Nordirland på ön Irland." Jag försökte skriva (nästan) så även här, ändra om det blir fel. /NH (talk) 17:26, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Det handlar om huruvida den svenska artikeln verkligen hör hemma här. Ämnet som föreligger i de andra språkversionerna definieras av Nationalencyklopedin som "den politiska sammanslutningen mellan Storbritannien och Nordirland", och detta skall reflekteras även när labeln uttrycks på svenska. Syftet med labels är inte att man skall blanda bort grundbetydelsen av ett ord för att istället försöka uttala sig i stil med att "äpplen" skall vara identiskt med "äpplen och päron", särskilt inte när grundvalen för hela wikidata-projektet är att göra det möjligt att kunna skilja ett begrepp från ett annat. Lägger till Nationalencyklopedins skrivning. -- Plast (talk) 09:40, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Den senaste svenskspråkiga beskrivningen, vilken ord för ord hämtats direkt ur Nationalencyklopedin, har plockats bort och ersatts utan motivering. Agerar man genom att explicit radera sådana understödda uppgifter får man också vara beredd på att det framstår som ägnat att påverka innehållet i en helt annan riktning än att det skall fortsätta vara baserat på externa källor.

Om man inte själv har insikten så kan det nämnas att Nationalencyklopedin i sammanhanget får betraktas som en välrenommerad källa, och om man inte kan acceptera hur ett ämne förklaras ens där leder även den mest välvilliga tolkning till att det antingen råder tveksamhet kring huruvida den svenskspråkiga artikeln förmår att hålla sig till ämnet, eller alternativt att man inte anser att artikeln skall avhandla detsamma som övriga språkversioner och att den därmed inte hör hemma här. -- Plast (talk) 09:36, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Det finns ingen anledning att ha en språkligt så tung beskrivning. Beskrivningen bör vara helt kortfattad. Det är ingen vetenskaplig eller juridisk definition. Edaen (talk) 10:53, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently an ongoing discussion on this page regarding, what could most closely be equated to the attempted establishment of, an alternative narrative where the "United Kingdom" is not the equivalent to the "United Kingdom" in the Swedish language, but instead equivalent to all aspects of "Great Britain". I find this line of reasoning fundamentally absurd, since it not only defies logic, but that it also contradicts the fact that those terms represent fundamentally different concepts, even in Swedish. I personally feel that Wikidata just is the wrong place to use as a staging ground to promote linguistic offshoots separate from established usage in common language.

I also find it problematic that not even the tenet that the United Kingdom would consist of "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" seems to be accepted by proponents of this theory, leading to repeated attempts to remove even that statement from the description here.

This might seem like a minor issue, but the problem is that if a certain concept, like the United Kingdom, can't be linked to the same term or article in another language, what is the point in establishing or even maintaining a facility like Wikidata? The "United Kingdom" just isn't the same as "Great Britain", especially not if it is an attempt to replace or manipulate the basic facts and derail the working usage of established terminology over language barriers. -- Plast (talk) 12:23, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Plast: Your copy-paste of a text from a Swedish copyrighted encyclopedia was replaced by the simple text "country in western Europe". Let us disregard the problems with copying text from NE for a moment. We have only one present country with this name in western Europe or anywhere in our version of the Universe. The main purpose of the descriptions is to separate this item from other items with the same label. "The description on a Wikidata entry is a short phrase designed to disambiguate items with the same or similar labels." (Help:Descriptions) If you want to read more about the subject it is better to follow some of the links in the page. If you want to contribute with a detailed description yourself, there is an option to edit Wikipedia. The full Swedish name here is "Förenade konungariket Storbritannien och Nordirland". Nobody has denied that. But we do not have the full name in any other Swedish label describing any other nation, so I cannot see why this item should make an exception. And nobody has either denied that "Storbritannien" also is the name of an island.

You say that "United Kingdom just isn't the same as Great Britain". Are you complaining about the Swedish or the English label? "Förenade kungariket" is a direct translation of "United Kingdom" and you sometimes see it in Swedish, but it is rarely used today except for some official documents who very few of us read. If we set the label to "Förenade kungariket" in Swedish, most people do not know what it is and some of us may confuse it with the 19th century union between Sweden and Norway. If you want to change the way we name this nation in Swedish, you are free to do so. But this is not the place! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 15:37, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion isn't about whether Great Britain is an island, or whether that name is also used as a short term to refer to the long version of the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This is about deliberately trying to confuse concepts by using this Wikidata entry as a linchpin to underline the fact that the Swedish language version should be allowed to use a misleading statement of facts whereby it replaces each and every mention of the "United Kingdom" with "Great Britain", which is not consistent with the established use in everyday language. This is regardless or whether you use English or whether you use the equivalent Swedish terms "Förenade kungariket" and "Storbritannien".

My contention is that it isn't possible to eliminate terminology naturally found in the language as the result of an agreement in order to purposely limit the scope and disallowing the use of certain terms, such as the "United Kingdom", based on nothing more than the opinion that "Great Britain" should be favoured.

My point is that this does not only encourage the creation of terminology invented purposely for and unique to Wikipedia, but also that this kind of behaviour is ultimately detrimental to any goal of hoping to build a collection of encyclopaedic knowledge, and whether concepts found in here can also be trusted in the outside world.

Consider that under this scheme the UK parliament can't be named for what it represents since it is required by policy to subsume the name "Parliament of Great Britain", which then represents not only Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but also the rest of Ireland, while the real parliament of Great Britain has to have an entirely different name invented for itself. Confusing these terms also makes it impossible to distinguish between a Geography of Great Britain that is taken both to include, and also at the same time not to include, Northern Ireland. Keeping the UK and Great Britain separate might be difficult enough as it is for a reader, but purposely inventing new terminology in order to further confuse issues is not only without basis, it is just ill advised.

Already to mention that this country consists of both "Great Britain" and "Northern Ireland" results in that description being repeatedly reversed, citing problems that such a description is either too complex or that it might violate copyright laws(!). Obviously this is ludicrous, because upholding the fiction that the term "United Kingdom" can't be distinguished from or taken to exist separately from that of "Great Britain" in the Swedish language, relies on a careful selection of what external sources can be used, while trying to discredit others or simply attempting to delete them.

A less biased English summary above could equally have read:

Summary in English: The Swedish label should be "Förenade kungariket". That is how Nationalencyklopedin (Q1165538) and Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden (Q776570) name this nation. "Storbritannien" can stay as an alias.

Doesn't anyone care about adhering to sources and not systematically using a biased selection to affect an outcome? I believe that the values that are fundamental to this entire project should be adhered to, not violated. -- Plast (talk) 14:18, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have never heard "Förenade kungariket" been used about this country outside official records. And as I said, Swedish labels are not used for full official names in any other nation-related item here at Wikidata. Why should Q145 be an exception? And I have not seen the name "Storbritannien och Nordirland" in use anywhere for at least 25 years. To use "Storbritannien" instead of "Förenade kungariket" as label does not change a single piece of fact about this nation. That the label here says "Storbritannien" instead of "Förenade kungariket" does not change a single thing about its border or who or what is located inside it. We are not inventing new terminology here. "Storbritannien" is the most used name for this entity in Swedish. If the Parliament of this nation should be called "Förenade kungarikets parlament" or "Storbritanniens parlament" is a completely different question. I am more used to names like "Underhuset" and "Överhuset"/"House of Lords" in Swedish, than the generic names you propose. And if you are editing an article like "Storbritanniens geografi", I propose that you first define which meaning of "Storbritannien" you intend to write about, just like you have to do with the article "Irlands geografi", which potentially can be both about the island and the republic, or "Danmarks geografi" which can be both about the country and the parish outside Uppsala, or "Amerikas geografi" which can be both about the continent or a village in Småland. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 15:47, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add: britisch as demonym for german!

The Finnish demonym isobritannialainen is currently marked as preferred, preventing other demonyms to appear as direct statements in the SPARQL query service. Knoan (talk) 08:37, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As it is intended to filter out other finnish variants, the only solution is to set preferred to all other languages too. --Infovarius (talk) 01:07, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be otherwise acceptable to reduce the rank of the other finnish variants? Knoan (talk) 09:58, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I find this page is locked and, from the English Wikipedia talk pages, I can see why. I note that here, on Wikidata, there appears to be a certain consistency around a date in 1927. Some descriptions override this with 1922. The historical events need not concern us, but 1922 was the year Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and 1927 was the year a short bill was enacted by the "British" King-in-Parliament (who was also King of Ireland). The Act (1) changed the name of the 34th Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the 34th Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and (2) provided that the term "United Kingdom" be interpreted as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.--GrounderUK (talk) 04:15, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As this item is mostly concerned about the period since 1927, it would be helpful that the description mentions this. It allows to distinguish for items to be used for year before 1927.

At some point this was present, but then deleted [2]. I suggest to restore that. --- Jura 13:00, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the membership of the EU from deprecated to normal rank, as this *statement* is of normal rank. The statement includes the qualifier of end date, so it is perfectly clear that the UK is no longer a member of the EU. With rank deprecated the membership won't show up in queries as to all members of the EU, past and present. WiseWoman (talk) 11:54, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Codes GB no longer in use for United Kingdom after 2021, changed to UK to be inclusive of Northern Ireland (which is not part of Great Britain), though the previous GB did also apply to Northern Ireland. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_vehicle_registration_code) Romeojuliets (talk) 11:24, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So both should be present with corresponding ranks and qualifiers. --Infovarius (talk) 21:15, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, both should be present with their qualifiers. Can anyone help to review this? (Add new records: "UK" with start time

"2021") Romeojuliets (talk) 20:40, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We have 1801, 1922, 1927, and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193) has 1801, 1922, 1927. A 5 year overlap is a bad idea, let alone a 127 year one

Why don't we agree that the formation of the Irish Free State (Q31747) in late 1922, means the the UK in its current form started started on 6 December 1922 as a preferred rank (the 2 days before Northern Ireland seceded could be recorded as a normal rank for completion), and record under official name a preferred rank "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" starting 1927, and a normal rank "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" ending in 1927. After all its only a delay in the naming that's at stake, and that doesn't appear in the colloquial name. The decision has been made that pre-1922 the country did have a separate entry with the fuller, different name, so the 1801 date should be removed here.

So the name change is recorded, but the political entity is rooted in 1922 for all purposes that require checking concurrency.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193) then has 1801-1922 dates everywhere, including both en and en-gb descriptions which confusing to the casual user. Vicarage (talk) 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]