Nobody is saying you can't call it whatever you like, but the fact is that the title isnt accurate.

I do believe you that often people say Ulster when they mean Northern Ireland. However you are saying that Ulster and Northern Ireland are the same thing.

One thing you (deliberately?) omitted from your article was that the Unionist cartel at Stormont tried to officially change the name of the statelet from Northern Ireland to Ulster. This was refused by the British government. And for good reason too.

I have often heard the expression that loyalists consider Ulster to be a substitute for the protestant controlled part of ireland, with no respect for history or geography. I believe for many that this rings true.

you also didnt clarify the point that if Ulster consists of just the 6 counties, in what province to Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan now lie?

Dan,

"However you are saying that Ulster and Northern Ireland are the same thing."

That's not quite what I said. I said that Ulster is used as an alternative name for Northern Ireland.

"One thing you (deliberately?) omitted from your article was that the Unionist cartel at Stormont tried to officially change the name of the statelet from Northern Ireland to Ulster. This was refused by the British government. And for good reason too."

That wasn't a deliberate omission, just didn't occur to me as relevant. Also, I believe what you said is incorrect. I can't find the reference now, but IIRC te move wasn't rejected by the British government but by the Northern Ireland PM who (with good reason) didn't want to cede the term Ireland/Irish to the Republic.

"you also didnt clarify the point that if Ulster consists of just the 6 counties, in what province to Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan now lie?"

I didn't clarifiy because it's not really my concern. If they want to be part of Ulster I'd gladly support talks aimed at readmitting them

"...rejected by the British government but by the Northern Ireland PM who (with good reason) didn't want to cede the term Ireland/Irish to the Republic."

Very confusing this, from a bunch of people who state "irish out of Ulster". Why would they not wish to cede such a term??

Beano my point is that Ulaidh has always been an Irish province. Even now the minority of people in Ulster are Protestant. It is for the Irish people to decide its boundaries, not the majority of a part of it.

Hence you have no right at all to claim that Ulster consists of 6, 4 or however many you think will create an artificial unionist majority.

Beano

Yes you're entitled to call your own site whatever you like, but just a couple of points:

1. "If they want to be part of Ulster I'd gladly support talks aimed at readmitting them" - I wasn't aware that Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal had ever left Ulster! I know a few rugby fans from these counties who regularly attend matches at Ravenhill and would take issue with your statement.

2. So do these counties only exist in some kind of netherworld twilight zone as a separate entity from the 4 provinces?

3. We all know about the controversy back around 1920 when there was talk of Tyrone & Fermanagh as the 2 counties with nationalist majorities being ceded to the Republic (re Churchill's "dreary steeples" speech) - so as a matter of interest, just hypothetically speaking if this had happened, would Ulster just consist of 4 counties and would Tyrone and Fermanagh now be part of this non-provincially-aligned twilight zone vacuum as mentioned above?

I know it's a futile, pointless debate akin to those neverending threads on Slugger about whether it's called Derry or Londonderry or whether the GAA/NI soccer team is sectarian. The bottom line is that nationalists when referring to Ulster will mean the 9 counties and unionists will mean the 6, so to be honest I don't really care as there are much more important things in life worth discussing, but I'd be interested to hear your views all the same!

"Very confusing this, from a bunch of people who state "irish out of Ulster". Why would they not wish to cede such a term??"

It's true the abuse of the whole concept of Irishness by fascist Catholic republicans like De Valera, Adams etc has led to many unionists rejecting the notion of Irishness in recent days, but I believe this is a mistake, and apparently so did the then PM.

"Beano my point is that Ulaidh has always been an Irish province. Even now the minority of people in Ulster are Protestant. It is for the Irish people to decide its boundaries, not the majority of a part of it."

As explained above, the current boundaries were already set by a British administration, so I don't think that holds. If you go back far enough I think the Kingdom consisted almost exclusively of modern-day Antrim and Down.

"It is for the Irish people to decide its boundaries"

I simply don't accept external Irish authority here, so obviously I disagree.

Dandy. I'm not a big rugby fan so that anomaly doesn't bother me too much.

"do these counties only exist in some kind of netherworld twilight zone as a separate entity from the 4 provinces?"

I've already stated what their status is (sadly) nothing to do with me.

"The bottom line is that nationalists when referring to Ulster will mean the 9 counties and unionists will mean the 6, so to be honest I don't really care as there are much more important things in life"

Which is more or less what I've said in my post. I just don't believe that without any kind of authoratative source, it's silly to correct people who have a different interpretation.

beano: “occupied three counties”

Shouldn't that be "occupied 26 counties"? More proof of how quick the northern unionists were to ditch their fellow unionists - all the Irish people have been let down in their own way by a variety of political leaders.

beano again: "... without a hint of irony, do their best to associate Ireland and Irishness with the symbolism of the southern State"

Is it not the other way around? The Free State stole the 32 county flag.

Very true, the tricolour was the flag of all ireland. It was an attempt to unite the two traditions of Ireland. Now dirtied by a variety of paramilitaries.

On the contrary the stormont flag, which is claimed represents NI, did not even represent the 2 tribes in the arbitrary boundaries of the northern state.

The tricolour is no more the flag of all-Ireland than the Union Flag is the flag of all of the British Isles/Great Britain and Ireland.

The union flag contains the flag of saint patrick, and hence claims to represent all of ireland. I suppose it can be said that all of the flags are in some way outdated.

I think 'Ulster' as an alternative to Northern Ireland, is only as incorrect as 'Ireland' is for the Republic of Ireland. The only difference is one is set in a legal document making it the official name. How can 26 counties claim to be the entire 32 county island?

"The reason from my own point of view, and the reason that impacted the naming of this site, is simply convenience. Ulster is quicker to write and rolls of the tongue more easily than the quadricyllabic “Northern Ireland”........ "

Aye, & for this very same reason most folk say Derry rather than the quadricyllabic 'Londonderry', so why do so many folk get so upset about that too?

As for the term Ulster, I tend to think of it as the old historic 9 counties, after all, when you think about it, there are many good Ulster-Scots folk living in those other three counties who may well like to think of Ulster as the old 9 counties, rather than 6.

"Aye, & for this very same reason most folk say Derry rather than the quadricyllabic 'Londonderry', so why do so many folk get so upset about that too?"

I don't think anybody gets 'upset' by people referring to the Maiden City in its short form. The people getting upset are those who pounce on any usage of the city's full name as evidence of (or justification for?) bigotry and sectarianism. But we both know that's a whole other discussion.

Fascinating discussion. I'm a Cavanman and a republican and here's my tuppenceworth.

1. Most southerners (i.e. outside of the nine counties) have mixed and confused feelings about Ulster. They don't seem to see it a shared space either. I have had people say they can't believe that I would support Ulster against Munster in rugby. They, apparently, see Ulster rugby players as a bunch of loyalists not fit to be cheered on by a republican like myself. This is low level bigotry, in my view, brought about by people too lazy to think about what they are saying. Personally, I don't care if the entire Ulster side was drawn from the DUP assembly party, I would still support any Ulster team against any other province. So there!

2. When English papers have headlines like "More trouble in Ulster" they are not, in the first instance, making a political point. They're using the shortest word.
They are also correct in that anything that happens in Northern Ireland happens in Ulster. I don't mind that.
What annoys me as a Cavanman is the reference to Northern Ireland as 'the Province' as that must surely refer to the province of Ulster. I live in hope that in the case of the English it's unwitting. In the case of the Newsletter, or occasionally the BBC, I get the feeling that I'm being deliberately left out. A cold house, if you like.

3. It is absolutely true that the borders of Ulster have shifted over history. Originally, it referred to roughly Antrim and Down. Some have said that Ulster is north of the Black Pig's Dyke some of which is actually in County Longford.
Some unionists imply that Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal took themselves out of Ulster and that they have now the right to call NI Ulster. They don't and in trying to do so they are making the same mistake that we all have made in the past, namely to persist with a political ideology as if our neighbours don't exist.

4. It's also true that the borders of all Ireland's modern provinces and counties was set by Elizabethan England.
That being so isn't it amazing how loyal most republicans and nationalists are to these boundaries and entities? And yet another English inspired entity (Northern Ireland) causes such heartache. Muddied thinking, surely? (I'm a confederate on this one. Even if a united Ireland was to come about I think the state of Northern Ireland should endure within it.)
And a little bit sad to see that an entity such as Fermanagh is about to become an irrelevance and nobody, unionist or nationalist, seems to care.

5. Finally, just to demonstrate how these things change over time, the Irish for 'province' is 'cuige' meaning 'fifth' which is a reference to the time when Meath was considered a province. That could come up in a pub quiz, you know.