Shipping Forecast August 2017 was the 150th anniversary of the shipping forecast. The 31 sea areas covering the waters around the British Isles are as defined by the map shown here: The areas were already roughly as listed above by 1949. In 1955, meteorologists from countries with North Sea coastlines met and recommended that the UK's sea area 'Heligoland' be renamed 'German Bight' to reflect more general usage amongst the nations concerned. They also recommended the divisions of 'Dogger' (with the north-eastern portion to be named 'Fisher') and 'Forties' (with the northern half becoming 'Viking'), and the renaming of 'Iceland' as 'South-east
Terminology of the British Isles excludes the Republic of Ireland. In October 2006, "The Times" quoted a spokesman for the Irish Embassy in London as saying that they would discourage its use. During a stop-over visit to the Republic of Ireland in 1989, the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, indicated that he assumed Ireland's head of state was Queen Elizabeth II, given that she was the British Queen and his officials said that Ireland was a part of the British Isles. In Northern Ireland, some nationalists reject the term and instead use "these islands", "these isles" or "Britain and Ireland" as an alternative.