Letter from Frederick H. Boland to John W. Dulanty (London)

Dear High Commissioner,
A note to confirm what I said on the telephone on the 2nd inst. with reference to your letter of the 22nd October about the name of the State.¹

Under our law, the terms 'Ireland' and 'Republic of Ireland' are both perfectly legal and, for the reasons explained in our official circular, we are anxious to get them used quite inter-changeably in such a way that one form will be universally taken to be exactly equivalent to the other.

The term 'Irish Republic' has no legal sanction so far as our law is concerned. It is, however, bound to creep into use, particularly in Continental languages in which the term 'Republic of Ireland' would normally be translated by the use of the adjective without the preposition. For that reason, and in order to avoid the term 'Irish Republic' being seized on to represent something different from the terms 'Ireland' and 'Republic of Ireland', the best practice, from our point of view, is really to use the three terms quite interchangeably as denoting the same thing. If we once protest against the term 'Irish Republic' and thereby recognise that it has the 26-County connotation, we will inevitably fix it with that meaning and reward the diligence of those who are seeking to promote its use for that very purpose.

The question is, I admit, capable of argument from several angles, but, as I say, the soundest policy seems to us to be to aim at getting the three descriptions used interchangeably as meaning the same thing. We have already had a certain amount of success in that direction.