CORRECTION - 'standardised addresses'
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP SAYING 'ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM'
NO ONE EVER SAYS THIS!
A parish might be Towcester, Northamptonshire, England,
or
Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
But do you say 'Newark, Delaware, USA, North America'?
Once you have said
eg, Kingston, Surrey, England
you have given sufficient information.
Comments
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Firstly, your "Newark analogy" is slightly flawed, in that "North America" is not a sovereign nation, whereas United Kingdom is. (Though you would have been right in comparing a suffix of "British Isles" with North America.)
However, I do agree with your main issue and believe the "United Kingdom" suffix should be dropped from the records of its constituent countries. When first added to FamilySearch records, it caused all sorts of problems relating to the search algorithm and there were many requests for it to be removed for that reason alone.
Of course, it will be a sensitive issue to many who live in Northern Ireland, who are probably unhappy with the use of that term, let alone with emphasising the six counties are very much part of the United Kingdom!
No, nobody would send a letter using both England, Scotland (etc.) and United Kingdom in the address. ("Great Britain" is the preferred term, in any case - "UK" causes confusion with Ukraine, apparently!)
In short, only staunch "unionists" could possibly be offended by FamilySearch dropping the United Kingdom suffix, an action which I would completely support.
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I would like to comment on this.
In short, experience has taught me that the use of "United Kingdom" is is the correct terminology to use.
@Joan Kemp in the context of a global perspective, using United Kingdom after the country name is correct.
@Paul W whereas I do agree with some of what you have explained, you are not correct in your comment that "nobody would send a letter using both England, Scotland (etc.) and United Kingdom ", on the contrary, if you are sending a sending a letter from outside the United Kingdom to an address inside the United Kingdom, that is exactly what you should do. Not including "United Kingdom" in the address is the equivalent of sending a letter from France to an address in the state of Georgia in the US and not including United States in the address. That letter could go very far from its intended destination.
I have experience, on more than one occasion sadly, of letters being send to addresses in the UK from the US and not having United Kingdom on the address, and consequently having issues. This is partially a problem where the item is addressed to a person in Northern Ireland, where these seem to be read as "Ireland" by the internal postal forwarding systems and misdirected. In all cases they arrived, however, the amount of time in transit was four or five times what would be normal, and some arrived with hand additions to the original addressing. Clearly the mail system somewhere along the route became confused.
@Paul W also, "Great Britain" is the preferred term, in any case - "UK" causes confusion with Ukraine, apparently!" again you are not accurate here. Great Britain is the name of an island to the northwest of Europe, it is not a country and not the preferred term to be used in addressing. United Kingdom is the correct term to use from a postal perspective.
@davidnewton2 I am on your team. I agree with your comments.
In summary, when viewed from a global perspective, having United Kingdom as the last line of any address for a location within the United Kingdom is the most full and complete form of addressing.
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True, most of the commercial mail I currently receive (even if sent to my London address from somewhere in England) has a United Kingdom last line. However, I read this when searching on Google earlier:
Should I put UK or England as an address? The USPS prefers that all mail to England, Scotland, or Wales be addressed with GREAT BRITAIN. Northern Ireland should be addressed as NORTHERN IRELAND. (The United States Postal Service has computer systems that use UK as an abbreviation for "Ukraine".)
With regard to British people, depending on their politics and / or place of residence within the United Kingdom, they might be very loathe to see United Kingdom as part of their address. I even hear a lot of people say, "I'm English, not British!" - though for many the complete opposite is true.
But you are wrong in your response to me:
...you are not correct in your comment that "nobody would send a letter using both England, Scotland (etc.) and United Kingdom ", on the contrary, if you are sending a sending a letter from outside the United Kingdom to an address inside the United Kingdom, that is exactly what you should do...
Even if it correct to use "United Kingdom", I can find no advice (from the Royal Mail, or elsewhere) that one would ever use the constituent country and the sovereign country when addressing a letter.
As far as FamilySearch is concerned, adding United Kingdom to its "British" records some years ago made searches very difficult for quite some time - I believe the algorithm must have been changed (or I've grown used to what to input to the placename field) as I don't notice such a problem any longer. FamilySearch needs to avoid politics and nicities in its standard placenames database, as the prime importance here is in being able to identify / find the records of ones relatives. However, when new record collections are added, it still (in its "Blog") is very inconsistent in labelling them (if for England only, say) as being for "England" or the "United Kingdom".
Yours
A Lifelong England Resident
(But call me British!)
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Interesting discussing. I always like learning new things about place names. However, I'd like to point out that we are not talking postal service here but rather proper historical accepted geographic names.
I did some quick poking around and ran across Encyclopaedia Britannica and this article: https://www.britannica.com/summary/United-Kingdom which states the name for the area you are all talking about is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," or "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain." The article describes it as an island country of western Europe. The same encyclopedia states London is the national capital of the United Kingdom.
But what I actually wanted to post was just a quick reminder that Family Tree lets you put in whatever place name you want to use for your family. That is a personal judgement by you and your extended family, who ideally will not fight over it, as to the proper historical place name for whatever time period you are working in.
@Joan Kemp, if you don't want to enter United Kingdom after England, then don't. Just enter place names like, for example, this:
It will display the way you want it to a person's page just fine. There are, admittedly, a few quirks in the new standardization routine which I reported over in the new Person page group some time ago. For some reason, you cannot get London to display as just London, England, unless you use the pre-1801 standard.
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