This is also the year of a referendum which the prime minister has presented as a choice between a "great Britain in the European Union" and a "great leap in the dark".
It's hardly surprising, then, that I find myself thinking about the country I live in.
David Cameron's image of a great Britain (and his invocation of a "greater Britain" at last year's Conservative party conference) plays with the idea of Great Britain, but that is not actually the name of the country.
Great Britain came into being at the union of Scotland and England (which had incorporated Wales since the 13th century) and then was subsumed into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Today's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland came into being in 1922, and is therefore not yet 100 years old.
But what is our nationality? Not UKish but British. This includes Northern Ireland, which isn't part of Great Britain, but not Ireland (which is part of the British Isles, but let's not go there). And Britain is often used as shorthand for the UK - more acceptable, perhaps, for the non-royalists among us - though some in Northern Ireland bridle at that while still considering themselves British.
Confusing, aren't we?
In sport we see Team GB (the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team), the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), an Irish Rugby Football Union which covers both the Republic and Northern Ireland and a Great Britain tennis team which this time does exclude Northern Ireland (but competed under the name British Isles, including all of Ireland, until 1912).
In football the four "home nations" of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have a team, while the Six Nations rugby union competition also features four "home nations" but this time Ireland is the whole island.
Foreigners often refer to the country as Great Britain, which annoys many in Northern Ireland and some in Scotland, or England, which should annoy everybody. The "Queen of England" often features in American reports (and they have their own problems, since some Canadians still hold out against the equation of "America" and "USA").
We seem to delight in adding to the confusion. There's the mining company Anglo American (founded in South Africa) and various Anglo-Irish agreements (which certainly apply to the whole United Kingdom with the Republic).
With devolution of some governmental powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over the last 20 years a new chapter has opened. England is wondering where and what it is. Some polls find majority support for an English parliament, which leaves the UK parliament worried about what it would do.
This asymmetrical state is symbolised in sport. When the anthems are played at an England v Scotland football match, one side sings Flower of Scotland and the other God Save the Queen, which is also the national anthem of Scotland (Peace! You know what I mean.). Another of the periodic outbursts of campaigning is underway to adopt an English anthem - Jerusalem in this case - though many traditionalists harrumph at the very idea.
We really ought to sort ourselves out.
And what do we call ourselves? I'm British, but I am a... what? The word "Brit" is often heard, but it's rather informal. The obvious answer is "Briton", but that rarely escapes from ancient history. It remains the obvious answer though.
And if we are Britons, what else? We talk about the British Pakistani community (for example) while in the USA they have Pakistani Americans. The "American" is the person, and "Pakistani" indicates a subgroup of Americans. We could refer to Pakistani Britons, Italian Britons etc. What effect might that have on the sore topics of multiculturalism and integration?
For now, let's just count the options we have for celebrating so many countries' sporting successes as our own.
