That's contentious. Technically the full name is the "Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team". Broadly the answer is "branding" and there isn't a strong enough push to change it.

Weirdly, NI Olympic athletes can choose to compete for either Ireland or the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_GB#Calls_for_renaming

I think Northern Ireland is unique in that regard, where every person holds (or at least, is entitled to) dual citizenship from birth.

I guess HKers are kind of simultaneously Chinese and not Chinese until they get old enough to form an opinion.

And I'm not sure if they actually have 'dual citizenship from birth', but South Korea has an open door policy to North Korean.. immigrants/refugees.

I think one of the parents of the child has to be a UK or Ireland citizen. For example, German parents resident in and having a child in Northern Ireland, the child is only a UK citizen (and perhaps German? I don't know that part of it)

UK nationality law is exceptionally complex (probably the most complex in the world). Irish nationality law is less complex but inherited a lot of warts from the UK

In general if you’re born in NI and your parents are settled (that is they have permanent residency or are EU citizens with derived status) or are UK/IE citizens you are both British and Irish.

If one of your parents is NI born, it entitles you to have both UK (by descent) and Irish (by Good Friday) citizenship. Couple this with being born in the US, and my kids have 3 citizenships from birth.

And there are many other overlaps like this - such as RoI people can join the British Army.

The reasoning is that UK is still not actually correct (though more correct) because the Olympic committee also oversees places like the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and so on which are not technically part of the UK. Then it seems they keep it because of tradition and because the country code is GBR.

~Each island competes as one.~

Edit - oops incorrect.

> Each island competes as one.

I don't think that's technically correct. Anyone in NI has Irish citizenship (who wants it), so any NI athlete can represent Ireland.

"Team GB" is the official team of the whole of the UK though, including Northern Ireland.

You are correct, the official name of the team is `Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team`

They don't at the Olympics.

For the Olympics you are incorrect but it varies.

Rugby - one team for the island

Soccer - one federation for each polity on the island, but Derry City plays in the League of Ireland (Republic of Ireland). Two international teams.

Cricket - one team for the island

Etc etc. There is some tiresome hand-wringing every time an athlete has decide on their allegiance.

Basically, Ireland is a political Mandelbrot set.