UK vs GBR

Given that I consider myself a Geography-History-Politics freak, this post is sort of a self humiliation exercise, as it's basic stuff that I should already have known, and moreover given how much I like that country/countries.

Some weeks ago, I received an email from a British colleague informing us that her "identifier" in the organization for which we work for had changed from "myname/UK/whatever" to "myname/GBR/whatever". At the time, I didn't pay much attention to it as I was rather busy, but today, for some reason, it came back to my mind.

I used to think UK and Great Britain where just the same, the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Island, but after some googling I turned out to be rather wrong.

Indeed, United Kingdom (UK) is that union that I mention above, but Great Britain is just the island containing England, Wales and Scotland (I used to think the name for the island was just Britain). Furthermore, GBR is not the abbreviation for Great Britain, but the abbreviation for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that is the term that should be used instead of United Kingdom.

If you think this is confusing, see the picture below :-) or better, check the wikipedia article. It was fun to read in a forum that many British citizens are not much aware of these differences.