British Isles naming dispute "British-Irish Isles" and the Islands of the North Atlantic. In documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as "these islands". To some, the dispute is partly semantic, and the term is a value-free geographic one, while, to others, it is a value-laden political one. The Crown dependencies of the Channel Islands may also for geo-political reasons be included in the British Isles, despite not being geographically part of the archipelago. United Kingdom law uses the term British Islands to refer to the UK, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man as a
British Isles naming dispute acronym IONA is a useful way of addressing the coming together of these two islands." This name is ambiguous, because of the other islands in the North Atlantic which have never been considered part of the British Isles. Some academics in the 1990s and early 2000s also used the term "Northwest European archipelago"; however, its use appears sporadically in historiography and rare outside it. The name "West European Isles" is one translation of the islands' name in the Gaelic languages of Irish and Manx, with equivalent terms for "British Isle". In Irish, (literally "Ireland and Great Britain") is the more