Names of The Irish State - Alternative Names

Alternative Names

A variety of alternative names are also used for the Irish state. Sometimes alternative names are chosen because the name "Ireland" could be confused with the name of the island the state shares with Northern Ireland. Other times alternative names are chosen for political reasons.

The official description Republic of Ireland is sometimes used as a name. Notably, the national football team plays as the "Republic of Ireland". This is because the Irish national football team was organized by the Irish Football Association, from 1882 to 1950. A new organization, the Football Association of the Irish Free State was formed after partition to organize a new team to represent the newly formed Irish Free State. Over time the Irish Football Association came to be the body for organising association football in Northern Ireland only. However, both association football federations continued to field a team called "Ireland". Despite protests from both organizations, in 1953 FIFA decreed that neither team could be referred to as Ireland in competitions which both teams were eligible to enter. The two teams now play under the names Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Irish Republic is commonly used as a name for the state in Britain but disliked in the Republic, where Irish Republic refers to the revolutionary state of the First Dáil in 1919. The initialism ROI (that is, Republic of Ireland) is also often used outside official circles. Shorter unofficial names include the Republic or the South.

Irish republicans, and other opponents of Partition, often refer to the state as the Twenty-Six Counties or 26 Counties (with Northern Ireland as the Six Counties or 6 Counties) and sometimes as the Free State (a reference to the pre-1937 state). Speaking in the Dáil on 13 April 2000, Sinn Féin's Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin explained it as follows:

"In the republican political tradition, to which I belong, the State is often referred to as the 26-County State. This is a conscious response to the partitionist view, prevalent for so long and still sadly widespread, that Ireland stops at the Border. The Constitution says that the name of the State is Ireland, and Éire in the Irish language. Quite against the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, this has led to an identification of Ireland with only 26 of our 32 counties in the minds of many people".