I was always under the impression that you couldn't get much more "Jolly Old England" than tea. I mean, talk about stereotypes.
Yeah, well, you have the whole "Britain is only England" stereotype to blame.
I'm also really confused about what this thread's actual purpose is. You asked for information and all, but that information doesn't actually change anything, from your perspective. You already established that the Japanese apparently can't tell England and the UK apart, so as pwhodges said it wouldn't actually matter where khara said Mari hailed from. So...
I didn't say that the Japanese can't tell England and the UK apart - at least, not in any way that is remarkably different from, say, the average common citizen of the USA.
That being said, I may be at fault for forgetting to mention the fact that the Japanese language does have words that unambiguously refer to England alone (e.g. イングランド, romanized "Ingurando"). This is what I wanted to confirm: Whether the wiki article uses "England" in the reference note because the source used such an unambiguous way of referring to said region, or whether it was actually using a word that ultimately derives from England's name yet its modern main meaning is to refer to the UK as a whole, with the meaning of "England" deprecate in importance and, ironically, even considered
improper from the Japanese POV (which is the case with イギリス).
I don't know about you guys, but unless there is actual evidence that
everyone in Studio Khara either genuinely thought that England and the UK are synonymous or didn't bother to correct the ones that made that mistake, I believe that it's more prudent to assume that they were using イギリス in its proper sense (i.e. "United Kingdom"), especially since the particular context of said word is designating which country (that is,
sovereign state) the character in question hails from, and thus correct the aforementioned reference note (which, uh, I actually did before you starting posting in this thread, having assumed that the discussion on the matter has concluded).
"Our magic is not omnipotent. A little bit of courage is the true magic."
–Negi Springfield, Negima: Magister Negi Magi
"Where there is distress, therein lies a story. Where there is a story, therein lies a will. And wherever there is a will, therein lies a soul."
–Evangeline A.K. McDowell, Negima: Magister Negi Magi