Initially, after 1937 the United Kingdom insisted on using only the name "Eire" and refused to accept the name "Ireland". It adopted the Eire (Confirmation of Agreements) Act 1938 putting in law that position. At the 1948 Summer Olympics in London the organisers insisted that the Irish team march under the banner "Eire" notwithstanding that every other team was marching according to what their name was in English. The UK Government generally avoided all reference to "Ireland" in connection with the state and used what Senator Thomas O'Connell described as "sneering titles such as Eirish". However, the term "Eirish" was also used by some writers in the US, who referred to "the Eirish people". Using the genitive form Éireann as an adjective, the UK media would refer to "Eireann Ministers" and the "Eireann Army". The Ireland Act 1949 changed this to "Republic of Ireland". It was not until after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that the UK government accepted the preferred name of simply "Ireland", at the same time as the Republic of Ireland dropped its territorial claim over Northern Ireland.
