On another thread recently, a Unionist poster was called out for referring to this state here as ‘Éire’. Two days later I happened to be reading a book, A Place Apart, written by a Waterford woman who cycled around the north for a period in 1978. In her book, the author deals with terminology at the beginning. I thought it interesting as our somewhat unique history and contemporary geo-political situation does place us in a strange place, speaking of terminology for this here state.

To cite the book – which tackles the terminology from the point of view of somebody ‘up there’ – and then if anybody would like to give their own thoughts on the subject:

In Northern Ireland one has a wide choice of names for the rest of the island: the Twenty-six Counties, the Free State, Southern Ireland, the South, Éire and the Republic of Ireland. The first of these if favoured by anti-partitionists; it implies that the division of the country is essentially artificial, arbitrary and temporary, and pending reunification the Dublin Government’s territory deserves no more dignified description.
- Grossly inaccurate and symptomatic of the style of writing used by the author. As Ó Brádaigh said of this claim, ‘We are not trying to force anybody to join the twenty-six county state, we are trying to escape from it ourselves!’ [as then President of Provisional Sinn Féin]

The Free State is the most generally used, within both communities, and as it became obsolete elsewhere with the introduction of our 1937 constitution, when I was aged five, it took me some time to get used to it. Southern Ireland and Éire seem to be used by Unionists who don’t much like the region in question (or at least its present administration). Some of the them were rather peeved when I pointed out that ‘Éire’ simply means ‘Ireland’ in Gaelic and for English speakers to employ it is either inane or – if it used to describe the Republic – inaccurate. I believe it came into fashion in Britain, after 1937, as a result of it being tendentiously used on our postage stamps.

‘Down South’ or ‘the South’, used by either side, seem to convey amused tolerance of Southern whims, or even affection, but ‘the Republic’ is used by only a tiny, liberal, forward-looking minority, most of whom have spent some time living outside Northern Ireland among people who think it proper to refer to a country by the name it has elected to use.

Personally I prefer to use the South and Southerners, which seem the least offensive terms from everybody’s point of view – except perhaps that of pedantic geographers.
- What say you, Leitrim and Donegal folk, are youse all just pedantic geographers?


Note: I do not endorse this book, the author strikes me as somewhat obnoxious and naive.