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Countries: (click on links below to view full list of counties with maps)

• England
• Scotland
• Wales
• Ireland

Crown Dependencies (Islands)
(These Islands form part of the British Isles but are self-governing).

• Channel Islands
• Guernsey
• Jersey
• Alderney (Dependency of Guernsey)
• Sark (Dependency of Guernsey)


• Isle of Man

• England
  
• Scotland
  
• Wales
  

England, Scotland & Wales are COUNTRIES in what is called Great Britain, commonly abbreviated to Britain. England has existed as a unified entity since the 10th century, with the union between England and Wales enacted under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284. In the Act of Union of 1707, England and Scotland agreed to permanent union as Great Britain.

The legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was implemented in 1801, with the adoption of the name the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". In 1921 the Anglo-Irish treaty formalized the partition of Ireland, with six Northern Irish Counties remaining part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. The current name: "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (Since abbreviated to "United Kingdom" further abbreviated to "UK") was adopted in 1927.

The term Great Britain or Britain refers only to England, Scotland and Wales. It does NOT include Ireland. (Northern Ireland or Republic of Ireland)

The Republic of Ireland (also called Eire) is a separate COUNTRY and is NOT a part of Britain or the UK.

The adjective "British" is generally taken to mean "of the United Kingdom" rather than "of Great Britain" or "of the British Isles", but "Irish" can mean either "of Northern Ireland (part of the UK)" or "of the Republic of Ireland" depending on the context.

Within a COUNTRY, a COUNTY is a regional geographic governing area, originally in ancient times a small Kingdom or Baroncy. (A COUNTY is similar to a divisional area in the USA or States within Australia.) Although people are proud to come from a certain COUNTY, UK law is NATIONAL. A PARISH is a further sub-division of a COUNTY into a small manageable area, usually centred around a CHURCH.

COUNTIES listed here for England, Scotland Wales and *Ireland (*all) are shown on the basis of historic COUNTY names rather than revised modern voting boundaries, since the historic boundaries are more relevant for genealogical research. In many instances they do not reflect the reorganisation/renaming of counties that took place in 1974. Further isolated but widespread changes occurred again in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1990s.

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