<P> After the Anglo - Saxon period , Britain was used as a historical term only . Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae ( c. 1136 ) refers to the island as Britannia major ( `` Greater Britain '' ) , to distinguish it from Britannia minor ( `` Lesser Britain '' ) , the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany , which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from Britain . The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474 , in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England , and James the son of James III of Scotland , which described it as `` this Nobill Isle , callit Gret Britanee '' . It was used again in 1604 , when King James VI and I styled himself `` King of Great Brittaine , France and Ireland '' . </P>
<P> After the Anglo - Saxon period , Britain was used as a historical term only . Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae ( c. 1136 ) refers to the island as Britannia major ( `` Greater Britain '' ) , to distinguish it from Britannia minor ( `` Lesser Britain '' ) , the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany , which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from Britain . The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474 , in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England , and James the son of James III of Scotland , which described it as `` this Nobill Isle , callit Gret Britanee '' . It was used again in 1604 , when King James VI and I styled himself `` King of Great Brittaine , France and Ireland '' . </P>
when was the term great britain first used
when was the term great britain first used
1474
1474