I’m a bit confused, I was presuming that イングランド is England and イギリス is the UK, but I keep running into questions that say England but want イギリス as the answer. Can anyone clear this up?
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イングランド is used when you really want to disambiguate England, and 英国 is the proper version of UK, but otherwise イギリス is commonly used for both England and the UK. It is both heart breaking and probably not surprising if you are from a part of the Union that isn’t England, given that some English people also conflate Britain and England, but yeah, that’s what it is.
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Wow I didn’t know UK is a union of 4 countries!
Now it makes sense that it’s called United Kingdom.
Now when I googled it, I think I heard about it when I was like 5, at the start of my English learning journey. I think it’s just for some reason there is really little clues on the internet about UK being not only England…
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I’m really sorry for no knowing that Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland are also the par of UK.
I wonder if it’s only my gap in knowledge or if this is a common trope 
If Japanese people really use it all to basically mean England, would it mean it really exists the mind of masses?
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Oh, makes sense now. Thanks for clearing it up. I am actually English but it confuses me when England is conflated with the UK, especially in a language I don’t know well, apparently. Probably should have guessed though.
Some English people even refer to it as England/English. Nobody outside of the country should worry about not knowing. The British government tends to prioritise English needs above others, and London moreover - the North of England is even treated as second class by some. In fact, Scotland keeps trying to become independent of the union and some folks in the North say “we’ll join you”.
Edit: I say all this as an English person, and I don’t want it to sound like I am being bitter and political. But the union is a weird thing.
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The structure of the UK isn’t very well known in my experience, I wouldn’t worry about it 
I should really have know that’s what it was now I think about it.
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This is a common gap in knowledge. I don’t think I’ve heard イングランド used all that much. イギリス is far more common as the name of our fair lands. That said England is often implied, but I’ve heard people say スコットランド and ウエールズ。
I’ve never heard a Japanese person disambiguate between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland though. If you ever visit it’s probably not a good idea to get them confused.
My friend who spoke Bengali found it amusing that for his Bangladeshi community, “London” was the rest of the world. Beyond Bangladesh, beyond the continent, beyond Europe and encompassing the rest of the world was “London.” Why? Because the BBC international radio service opened with “This is London calling” followed by wherever the news took place.
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In the experience of my country, gap like this, when a big part of the develop world thinks your country is a part of another bigger country, can be closed by that bigger country that exists in a mind of people invades the little one which does not.
So for example if England tried to assault Scotland, and started a massive long lasting war against it, the whole civilised world would notice that UK is actually not only England but actually 4 counties.
Not like I’m saying that it’s a good idea or something 
Plus we don’t know yet how long lasting that effect is
The United Kingdom is a sovereign country with its own government. So England and Scotland have the same government and one military.
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While it has a sort of “main” government, Scotland, Wales and NI have their own devolved governments and have their own legal systems. So they do and don’t have the same government. Obviously this creates friction because they can self-govern to an extent but the government in England wields more power because there are more English MPs in government.
Weirdly, I guess because they don’t need to, England is the only member country without devolved government so there’s not really much delineation between the English and UK government. Likewise, having the most members means the UK treasury tends to prioritise English needs (and mainly around London).
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I’ll make it simple; everyone drinks tea with milk in, and thinks their football team is better than everyone else’s.
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I’m an English guy working as an ALT in Saitama, and when I was making my self-introduction lesson I included a little explainer on the countries of the UK just to be safe. The reaction that got from most of my students was “yeah, we know this already”, so at least in my experience the differences are fairly well known… but yeah, people absolutely do use イギリス interchangeably to mean either England or the UK. You go along with it just because that’s how the language is, but I do feel a tiny bit guilty knowing how much it’d annoy my Welsh and Scottish mates lol
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