(May 14, 2015 at 1:03 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: If you got rid of the monarchy, you would no longer be the United Kingdom. You would not be a kingdom of any kind, united or otherwise.
I do not mean for the above to be taken as a reason to not abolish the monarchy. But out of curiosity, what do you think you would be called if you did get rid of the monarchy?
Probably "The Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" or words to that effect, just replacing the "United Kingdom" bit with "Republic" or whatever you replace the monarchy with.
What you'd call the country in every day conversation would be complicated, since the British Isles would technically have two separate republics (the Republic of Ireland, and the Republic of GB + Northern Ireland). Having said that, since "Great Britain" is often used as a description of the Union and not the island (for example, our Olympic Games team was called "Team GB"), I think you could shorten the full name of the country to "The Republic of Great Britain" with no problems. That way we could still use the initialism "GB" and even "GBR" (which we also currently use), and even "RGB" if we wanted.
