Who, my husband asked, expects every man will do his duty? He was responding to the interesting and important question that Charles Moore raised last week about the name of the country if Scotland leaves. My husband, naturally, is all for calling it England. Even the Oxford English Dictionary defines England as ‘The inhabitants of England (sometimes also Britain) regarded collectively.’
The Welsh would certainly be aggrieved, and the Northern Irish up in arms. But we can’t include everyone in the national name. Even now, some of the Cornish are cutting up rough. As someone wrote in the Church Times not so long ago: ‘Our villages — Ingleby, Irby, Saxton, Scotforth, Swaffham, Walmer and Wigston Magna — are named after the Angles, Irish, Saxons, Scots, Swabians, Welsh and Vikings who once lived in them.’ What the Swabians were doing in Swaffham I can’t imagine, yet it seems to be true.
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