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Blighty is commonly used as a term of endearment by the expatriate British community or those on holiday to refer to home. In Hobson-Jobson, an 1886 historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words, Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell explained that the word came to be used in British India for several things the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato and soda water.
Many place-name adjectives and many demonyms are also used for various other things, sometimes with and sometimes without one or more additional words. (Sometimes, the use of one or more additional words is optional.) Notable examples are cuisines, cheeses, cat breeds, dog breeds, and horse breeds. (See List of words derived from toponyms.)
The precise origin is the subject of some debate, but it is known to have been used as early as 1743. Rudyard Kipling published the poem "Tommy" (part of the Barrack Room Ballads) in 1892 and in 1893 the music hall song "Private Tommy Atkins" was published with words by Henry Hamilton and music by S. Potter.
The country which was initially called (County of the) Ardennes named itself after its homonym capital city founded in 963. From Celtic Lucilem "small", German lützel, OHG luc(c)il, luz(z)il (cognate to English "little") and Germanic Burg: "castle" or "fortress", thus Lucilemburg: "little castle" or "little fortress".
The principal substrate of British toponyms is thus Celtic in origin, and more specifically Brittonic ('British'), ancestral to modern Welsh and more distantly related to the Goidelic languages of Ireland and Scotland. The oldest place-names in England appear to be the names of rivers, many of which are interpreted as being Brittonic in origin.
[109] [110] [136] This has been used to explain why first-, second- and third-generation immigrants are more likely to describe themselves as British, rather than English, because it is an "institutional, inclusive" identity, that can be acquired through naturalisation and British nationality law; [290] the vast majority of people in the United ...
Origin disputed, but may be an Anglicisation of the Old Norse Hjältland (in the Scots a "z" is pronounced as a "y" in modern English), or suggested to refer to a personal name (Zet's land). Sealtainn in Gaelic. The old Gaelic name for the islands was Innse Cat, "islands of the Cats": the same people that Caithness is named after. Stirlingshire
The term Britain is widely used as a common name for the sovereign state of the United Kingdom, or UK for short. The United Kingdom includes three countries on the largest island, which can be called the island of Britain or Great Britain: these are England, Scotland and Wales.