Whiskey-swilling, rugby-mad rascals: How the world sees us

IT would be easy to take offence at being described as a nation of whiskey-swilling, rugby-mad rascals.

Yet that fiddly-aye stereotype is the very persona ascribed to us in a newly completed set of irreverent maps which compares how various nations see each other.

“Rascal” is assigned to us by the British, “whiskey” by Germany and “pub” by the Bulgarians.

The Italians perhaps acknowledge our superiority in the sport when they assign us the word “rugby”.

Perhaps Ireland should consider itself lucky though.

France is assigned the moniker of “smelly people” by the US, England is classed as “proto Americans” by the Bulgarians, and Germany is seen as addicted to “clocks” by the Italians and “dirty porn” by the Americans.

Yanko Tsvetkov, a Bulgarian designer and illustrator living in London produced seven maps in which countries and regions are labelled according to the stereotypes of their inhabitants held by the people of other nationalities.

He was inspired to create the first map in the series during the gas row between Ukraine and Russia in 2009.

Mr Tsvetkov’s website has been inundated with around half a billion visitors since he published the series, called Mapping Stereotypes.