As I was sat in an interesting meeting this afternoon looking at the nameplates of 29 other nations my mind started pondering something.
In French, the USA is Etats Unis and the UK is Royaume Uni. Since the states that are united are plural the 'unis' gets an s on the end, but because the kingdom that is united is singular we have an s-less uni instead. That's fair enough but it got me thinking about the whole 'united' adjective in place names and I reckon we've got an unliveablewith inconsistency that needs sorting here and now. Either:
a) it should remain as 'United States of America' but the UK should become 'United Countries of Great Britain and Northern Ireland', or even better, simply 'Kingdom' (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) because a single Kingdom must be united anyway, making the 'United' redundant, or
b) it should be the 'United Country of States of America' and the 'United Kingdom' if the united is referring to the fact that a bunch of things got bundled together to make a single thing.
On balance I reckon option a) is the winner for me, which means we don't need to change the UN organisation to "United World of Nations" or "Nations" but we do need to change the football club to "Bits of Manchester United" (or maybe just "Manchester").
(On rereading none of this makes as much sense as it does in my head)
As for Manchester United, what is "Redscum" in French? oh yes, ecume rouge, which is even better if reversed: rougecume, which is nearly rude.
Dinosaur plant (ref to Limerick)
United (Kingdom of Great Britain) and Northern Ireland. Then "United" refers to a plural entity, just like the States of America.