Talk:Names of the British Isles

It's time to take out the original research

This page will probably always be politicized to some degree, and with that comes an unfortunate lack of care in dealing with the evidence. To avoid making the same mistakes I'll stick to what I know best.

The section on the Annals of Ulster and Clonmacnoise was not written with a thorough understanding of the source material. Just the phrase "The Latin Annals of Ulster" indicates a problem; the Annals of Ulster are bilingual, and in the late eighth century were at a point of transition that often led to a fascinating blend of Latin and Irish within the same entry. More seriously, it's not at all clear "islands of Britain" here is meant to include Ireland, and not just relatively small islands around Britain that the Irish clerics who originally wrote these annals had intimate religious, scholarly, and professional connections with (e.g., Lindisfarne, Iona, etc.). I'll clarify this point in the next paragraph, but here I'll just note that that the British Islands or British Isles (the specific form obviously depends on the translator) cannot be auto-assumed to include Ireland without secondary source material. Two of the sources given for this Annals of Ulster passage were published more than a century ago, and so cannot be used for this purpose, and I wasn't able to quickly find a copy of "The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131): Text and translation" to see if the authors of that work (which was published in 1983 and seems entirely legitimate) have any commentary with regard to the phrase in question.

The two sources given for the Annals of Clonmacnoise are both books published over a hundred years ago. Even worse, they are used misleadingly in this Wikipedia article to imply that the original annalists described Ireland as British in some way, when they seem to just be using Islands of Britain or British Isles to describe the small islands immediately surrounding Britain (again, Lindisfarne, insular Scotland, etc.). We know that "Islands of Brittaine" probably doesn't include Ireland because one of the sources juxtaposes the 791 entry, "All the Islands of Brittaine were wasted and much troubled by the Danes: this was their first footing in England," with this text and commentary for 792: "'Rachryn was burnt by the Danes.' O'Donovan rightly states that 'this is the first attack on record made by the Danes upon any part of Ireland,' but adds that the true year was 794, which is in accord with the Annals of Ulster." I don't think that "The Norse influence on Celtic Scotland," published as it was in 1910, should be used as a source for this article, but the fact that it was manipulated like this leaves me with basically zero confidence in the presentation of any of the primary source material quoted in this article.

This topic is clearly too contentious to have editors adding primary source material from whatever antiquated editions they can find on archive.org. Let's stick to secondary sources and let the experts speak for themselves. 2601:85:C601:9D60:126:AE84:A3BB:8548 (talk) 19:36, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

thank you for taking the time to keep wikipedia accurate. Augmented Seventh (talk) 00:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

@2601:85:C601:9D60:126:AE84:A3BB:8548 Your arguments are, I think, groundless because they rely on two assumptions:

1. "it's not at all clear "islands of Britain" here is meant to include Ireland, and not just relatively small islands around Britain"
2. "the British Islands or British Isles … cannot be auto-assumed to include Ireland without secondary source material"

Neither of these assumptions appear to be derived from anywhere authoritative and neither seems at all relevant. There is no commentary about some hypothetical different sense of "British Isles" (etc) unique to Irish chroniclers in the 1983 edition, any more than there is in Henderson 1910, of whom your reading seems erroneous, since nowhere is it implied that Ireland must be excluded from what Henderson 1910 plainly translates as "all the British isles" or what Mac Airt & Mac Niocaill 1983 call "all the islands of Britain". Certainly it would be an extraordinary thing if, alone in the world, the Irish annalists meant something other than "the British Isles" when they wrote "the British Isles" (etc) and took time to specify that "all" the islands were included, but if that is the case no evidence has been produced for it.

There is no reason to remove material solely because on the mistaken assumption that "books published over a hundred years ago" can't be Wikipedia sources. Unless and until newer research appears, that is what must be relied on. I was much interested to hear of "antiquated editions" being used. In every instance, material I have added has cited the most recent critical editions, so I would be interested to know which texts you imagine have been superseded.

Your accusations of "politicized" and "manipulated" are as unevidenced as your other assertions. You must assume good faith and not cast apersions. You must also provide good reasons to remove material, yet you have deleted swathes of the article with no explanation beyond "original research", a claim refuted by the fact that everything you have removed has either a primary or secondary source and in most cases both. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 19:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

@The wisest fool in Christendom Reading your response, I agree that I shouldn't have used the term "manipulated." The error of interpretation (which I'll get to below) could easily have been the result of uncareful reading, and I apologize for not assuming good faith. My comments on politicization weren't directed at any user in particular, however, and simply refer to the pretty obvious reality that the topic lends itself to politicization.

To restate the original point that I made about "The Norse influence on Celtic Scotland" and its treatment of the Annals of Clonmacnoise more explicitly, the entry for 791 discusses a Danish (Viking) assault on "All the Islands of Brittaine," but then immediately follows it up with text that makes it clear that the first Danish (Viking) raid on "any part of Ireland" was recorded in the 792 entry. All of the Islands of Britain attacked in 791, Ireland only attacked in 792 (or 793 and 794, respectively, if we prefer the Annals of Ulster chronology). It's literally the next paragraph. Maybe you can come up with some kind of resolution to this apparent contradiction, but I don't see why anyone else should take that seriously. I certainly don't expect Wikipedia to host thousands of words of my own personal, non-expert opinions about primary source documents, and you shouldn't either.

Your protestations about using both primary and secondary sources ring hollow. Selecting and presenting block quotes in the "History" section of an article like this, particularly in such enormous quantities, is an act of interpretation. Moreover, you frequently (although not always) use secondary sources merely to extract primary source quotations from them without expert interpretation, which brings about all of the same problems as if you had just gone to the original manuscripts. Why should anyone trust you to interpret these sources? If you had the expert knowledge to do so you would never have referred to the "Latin Annals of Ulster" in the first place. Are we to expect that your treatment of the Persianate material is much different?

If you want to collect, compile, and publish every reference to "British Isles," "Britannic Islands," and "Islands of Britain" you can find on the internet, just start a blog. It doesn't belong on Wikipedia. 2601:85:C601:9D60:126:AE84:A3BB:8548 (talk) 21:49, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, to clarify, Original Research doesn't mean that something is literally made up out of thin air (that's often just Vandalism or Opinion). It means that a Wikipedia user is drawing directly from primary source material or synthesizing their own conclusions from secondary source material. 2601:85:C601:9D60:126:AE84:A3BB:8548 (talk) 21:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Just cutting out everything you don't like, is certainly not going to work. I have reverted your cut. The Banner talk 04:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Good revert. Can I ask please that we avoid sweeping generalisations and borderline personal attacks. Accusations of a "lack of care" and hinting that edits are politically motivated are not at all helpful. I think the IP raises a couple of valid points but they could be framed much, much less antagonistically.

This article is precisely about the name(s) of this group of islands through the ages. Therefore efforts to collect and compile these historical references are, in fact, much appreciated. This is pretty much the core purpose of Wikipedia - and also, very much not what a blog is!

One only needs to look at a map to see that, no matter what it is called, this group of islands off the coast of Europe is one archipelago. Therefore I don't agree that we should assume that all references to the island group exclude Ireland unless proven otherwise. However in the specific case of "The Norse influence on Celtic Scotland" / the Annals of Clonmacnoise, "All the Islands of Brittaine" may well exclude Ireland based on those invasion dates. I suggest we focus this discussion on that specific point and drop the exaggerations, accusations and assumptions of bad faith. Please. WaggersTALK 08:42, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

OK, I've updated my priors on what info should be included in the article. Reading above, we should probably add back in the stuff about "Oceani Insulae," because it conforms to the standards you've set out here. 2601:85:C601:9D60:CED:9DD3:1462:9B35 (talk) 23:25, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree - the consensus was "oceani insulae" was used as a description - "those islands in the ocean" - not a name. WaggersTALK 10:13, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Are you now trying to add original research? But no, a description is not a name. The Banner talk 10:29, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Let me clarify my comment above - I said "efforts to collect and compile these historical references are, in fact, much appreciated", that does not mean that compilation of references should be added in its entirety to the article. So no, I'm not trying to add original research; equally we need to avoid discounting valid references on the basis of other original research. WaggersTALK 12:20, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

To avoid misunderstandings: I was referring to the IP. The Banner talk 12:59, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah thanks, that makes more sense :) WaggersTALK 07:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I have now added some more material on the different interpretations of the "islands of Britain" or "Islands of Alba" in various mediaeval Irish texts. I will add here that it is impossible to rely on the remark on the raid on Rathlin/Lambay to prove a more restrictive usage, since the same entry (at least in 1983 edition) mentions that the Vikings hit Skye too. If the island near Ireland is to be excluded from the "Islands of Britain", the the Isle of Skye must also be. Neither is it necessary that if the raid on Rathlin/Lambay was described as the first attack "on record" in Ireland, then the previous raid on the "Islands of Britain" must therefore exclude Ireland. The uastatio omnium insolarum Britannię does not specify anywhere in particular that was attacked, so the Rathlin and Skye raid is the first historical record of any particular sites laid waste. (I am aware of the proposed emendation that makes the reference to Skye a reference to a looted reliquary rather than an attack on the Hebridean island, but I do not think it affects the relevance of this toponym "islands of Britain"/"British isles". The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 21:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not going to keep arguing my original point about the Annals paragraph because it's been made moot by the addition of scholarly interpretation; the absence of this throughout much of the article is my main problem with it. The new sources have turned the original connotation of the paragraph on its head (and basically confirmed my original interpretation of what "Islands of Britain" meant, but no biggie), and there's every reason to believe that the same could be true elsewhere when primary sources are used without scholarly context.

Seriously: Does anyone editing this article really understand medieval Persianate geographical treatises well enough to know that they're not unintentionally presenting the bare text in a misleading way?

Also, on the Cáin Adomnáin: The edit to the opening sentence isn't totally wrong, but it's less accurate than just referring to the text itself. There's actually a scholarly debate on which part of the text is original, composed at the Synod of Birr, and which was added a couple centuries later. This is discussed in all the sources I linked, but we probably don't need it in this article because the difference won't make it any more or less Medieval. It's also not totally clear how the listed magnates and clerics assented to the Cáin, so we should probably drop the word "signed" as well. 2601:85:C601:9D60:C57E:8BC4:F633:A32C (talk) 16:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Nothing has confirmed your original interpretation, which is just that. There are several interpretations of the "islands of Britain" or "of Alba", some of which are mutually exclusive. Woolf 2007's view ("probably just the islands from Tiree south") contradicts Ross 2011's ("presumably the Western Isles"). Neither Ross nor Woolf explain Conall Mag Eochagáin's equally contradictory statement that "this was thiere first footing in England". All the Western Isles are north of Tiree, and neither they nor anywhere else in the Hebrides have ever been considered to be "in England". It is absurd to maintain that every mention of the British Isles might instead refer to some quarter of the Hebrides.

I don't know why you keep referring to "medieval Persianate geographical treatises". The only such text here is the Hudud al-'Alam and nothing stated here is not stated by Douglas Morton Dunlop, and/or Vladimir Minorsky and Clifford Edmund Bosworth. This is equally true of the Arabic texts.

As for the Cáin Adomnáin, it was you yourself who described it as "a law passed by an assembly of clerics and secular rulers from Ireland, Gaelic Scotland and Pictland". I simply shortened the wording and added a link to Synod of Birr in place of "an assembly of clerics". I don't see how the rather parliamentarian "pass" is better than "signed". It is certainly not less anachronistic. The text has a list of names appended, which can hardly be described as anything other than a list of signatories. How the names came to be associated with the text seem irrelevant. In any case, the text at the place quoted directly refers to Birr and the men of British Isles there. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 15:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Lead

A reminder that the lead is intended to be a summary of the article's content and, as a general rule, does not need to contain any citations because all the information it contains is (or should be) cited in the corresponding section of the article. Also, if you add something, and someone removes it, don't just add it back again. That's edit warring. Instead, come here to the talk page to discuss it. WaggersTALK 11:05, 22 August 2024 (UTC)