Belfast & Norht Ireland Ireland is the third largest island in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain. Politically, the Republic of Ireland (confusingly, also named simply 'Ireland') covers five-sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, covering the remainder in the north-east. The population of the island is slightly under 6 million (2006), with 4,239,848 million in the Republic of Ireland (1.7 million in Greater Dublin) and an estimated almost 1.75 million in Northern Ireland (800,000 in Greater Belfast). This is a significant increase from a modern historical low in the 1960s, but still much lower than the peak population of over 8 million in the early 19th century, prior to the Great Famine. The name Ireland derives from the name of the Celtic goddess ??riu (in modern Irish, ??ire) with the addition of the Germanic word land. Most other western European names for Ireland, such as French Irlande, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese Irlanda, German Irland, and Dutch Ierland, as well as Russian ??�???????????�� [irl??an??d??ij�?], derive from the same source.