WHAT’S in a name? The media everywhere has to be careful with nomenclature, not least in the US where the White House clown has banned certain outlets from press conferences for either refusing, or more likely forgetting, to call the Gulf of Mexico the new name he gave it, “Gulf of America”.

Here is worse than most places, for there are at least two names for everywhere, including the sub-polity itself.

Visiting BBC journalists say they’re warned not to use the terms “six counties” or “the north”.

BBC NI has its own absurd rules for Derry. It prefers Rosslea, the unionist spelling for Roslea, even though it’s from the Irish Ros Liath. Maybe they take their cue from Rosslea Manor?

Noel Doran: Why flags divide us but Irish language on street signs need not

The big one is “the rest of the UK”, a completely meaningless phrase.

So, we have average house prices in “the rest of the UK”, average wages in “the rest of the UK”. It’s a desperate attempt to keep the north attached to an invented state.

Invented? How so? Well, in case you think the United Kingdom goes back into the mists of time, the state only assumed that official title in 1927 with the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act.

In 1801 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was invented. After 1927, when Britain formally acknowledged that thirteen-sixteenths of Ireland had become independent, the........

© The Irish News