In Hungarian, for example, we use kormány to mean a mix of government, administration and cabinet, but mostly cabinet. Still it's usually translated to and from "government". But in English government is a very broad word that basically means all the tax funded institutions, not just the ministers. We rather call that "the state". For example in Hungarian nobody would say we have "government-funded" education or healthcare, rather we have "state-funded" ones. But in English "state" is very overloaded with many senses, so "government" took its place. It used to be strange to my ear in American movies when I knew less about the system, e.g. really the government is trying to find you? Like ministers and stuff?
That said, I don't know about the UK. If a Londoner talks about the "national level", is that England or the UK?
Oh damn I'm wrong and starting to see your point. Eg in German, "land" refers specifically to the federal state and not the federation. You need to use bundessomethingsomething to address all of Germany. Weird stuff!
EDIT suddenly I realize how weird a name the UN has. There's not really any proper nation states left in the word. Bhutan maybe?
I have no idea, but I like to think that it would've been the United Countries but then Scotland would've wanted a seat.
The name of the United Nations is an artifact of WWII - that was the name chosen by the alliance on 1 January 1942, just after the US entered the war, to describe their now-common cause. Given the wide variety of regimes fighting on the same side [1] and the common ideological basis of the combatant countries, "nations" and "brotherhood of nations" style of nationalism were an umbrella everyone could get behind while still having an appropriate amount of emotional oomph.
[1] Mostly. The USSR wasn't fighting Japan.
I beg your pardon?
They were told that, that's why they mostly assimilated. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/SpeakFre...
Tell that to the Bretons, Alsatians, Occitans, Corses, Catalans; not to speak of the outre-mer colonies.
In English, the question then becomes "Where are we going to import this word from?"