#britishness

So, this is gonna get wordy. Be warned!

I would like to start off saying that any Scot telling you to call them English is probably English, rather than Scottish.

Otherwise, being British or Scottish specifically and preferring either name is very often a political statement, more notably after the 2014 independence referendum. People in Scotland who want to be called British are much more likely to be Unionists, or sympathetic to the union status quo-- might even be Conservative! Unionists are known in Scotland for being more Conservative than their anti Unionist counterparts. I'm not a unionist so I won't be explaining why they like the union.

Meanwhile, someone who places emphasis on being Scottish before British is more likely to be anti-Union, having voted to leave the UK in 2014. This isn't a definitive one or the other answer, because like you said there isn't necessarily a single correct answer. That said, many people in Scotland are more left leaning than our English counterparts, and politically many of us place some weight to that. On top of that, the Acts of Union never annexed us the way Wales was, instead merging the governance of the two sovereign kingdoms (Scotland, and England/Wales), and in doing so there were some agreements in these Acts that we would be an 'equal nation' of sorts. This... hasn't always been the case in the UK, and a lot of different people who care about that have their own nitpick with the inequality of the United Kingdom as it relates to living here. There's a fucktonne of reading to do on that, I assure you.

Also, many people know how atrocious the British Empire was, over here, and don't want anything to do with it as far as we can manage. Hating the existence of the remnants of empire is a pretty valid reason to not want to be 'British', imo.

Also, I want to reiterate that no part of Scotland is in England, we are not a region of England. A Scot is only English if he's also, well, English. This is important to remember, because it's important to people. Plus, England spent centuries trying to invade and conquer us, so yknow. They did some pretty awful things to historical Scots in doing so, including banning our instruments and languages to the point that there's an entire historical genre of Scottish music performed a capella, because all we could use was our voices.

All this and more is why someone in Scotland probably won't take kindly to being called English by a stranger. Plus, honestly, it's just a bit ignorant and may just come off offensive. I doubt a French man would enjoy being called German, you know?

In general, it's important to listen to what the person you're talking to would rather be called, cause isn't that the same for everything? We've got preferred names, pronouns, titles, roles; some places like here we've also got preferred terms for our identity within our countries. This also isn't uncommon in certain regions of Europe at all, so I've a feeling this may resonate more with people from Catalonia or the Tyrol, so on and so forth.