Hacker News Reader

"Ireland" is the official name of the country as per it's constitution. The "Republic of Ireland" is a description of the country given its status as a republic, and has been commonly mistaken as the name of the country due to editorial choices by some UK media.

Even Wikipedia erroneously catalogues "Ireland" under "Republic of Ireland".

View on HN

Wikipedia doesn't have it wrong per se, it's just that it can't have two articles by the same name (Ireland the island, and Ireland the nation, only one of those can be at /wiki/Ireland), so I guess they opted for Ireland to mean the island, and then the page for the country is /wiki/Republic_of_Ireland...

However! That page makes it clear that the name of the country is Ireland:

Ireland (Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] (listen)), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann),

since Ireland there takes precedence.

In conclusion, I think it's just a technical limitation.

Wikipedia could also do Ireland (island) and Ireland (state) if they wanted to

Less a limitation, more of a choice. Other articles, such as the ones on Australia or Cyprus, are able to disambiguate between the country and the landmass.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com