or a female personification of Britain. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to the United Kingdom (abbreviation UK), is the sovereign state comprising Great Britain plus Northern Ireland since 1927. (The Partition of Ireland took place in 1922, but the consequent change in the official title of the UK was only made by Act of Parliament five years later.) The United Kingdom is often called Britain, even on official websites, where such use is described as "informal". A proposal to rename the political entity as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ulster" was formally recommended by civil servants to the Cabinet in 1949 but ultimately rejected. The historical United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was Great Britain plus Ireland, for the period 1801 to 1922, although the name change after the secession of the Irish Free State only took place in 1927. While "United Kingdom" is normally abbreviated UK, the official ISO 3166 two-letter country code is GB and the three letter code is GBR (Ukraine has the two letter code UA and the three letter code UKR). Due to a pre-existing convention originating in the UK's JANET academic computer network, the UK's Internet top-level domain is .uk, a break from the TCP/IP practice of following ISO 3166 (a .gb domain has also been used to a limited extent in the past but is now defunct). GB was also used on car number plates to indicate the United Kingdom until September, 2021. The car sticker has been 'UK' since then. Ireland () refers, geographically, to the island of Ireland, or to any of the following: Historically: The Kingdom of Ireland was Ireland for the period 1541–1801. (The King of Ireland remained Head of State in the Irish Free State and Ireland/Éire until the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 abolished that status). The Irish Republic, established by the Irish Declaration of Independence, was a 32-county republic encompassing the entire island, during the period 1919–22—though its de facto rule did not encompass all of the island. During this period, according to British law, Ireland remained part of the UK though its independence was recognised by Russia. Southern Ireland was a 26-county region of Ireland that was created when Ireland was partitioned under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It was superseded by: The Irish Free State is Ireland excepting Northern Ireland during the period 1922–37.