How many shires are there

The term "shire county" is actually a tautology, the word county coming from French and shire from Saxon. Moreover, '-shire' is sometimes added, optionally, to Devon and Dorset. In general, those counties ending in '-shire' are named after the present or former county capital. In a few cases the link may be obscure. Shropshire is named after Shrewsbury; Lancashire after Lancaster though the county capital has been Preston for a very long time ; Hampshire is named after Southampton though the country capital is and has always?

It is said that Wiltshire is named after Wilton, to the west of Salisbury the county capital , and though Buckingham is in Buckinghamshire the country capital is Aylesbury - of roasted duckling fame.

Get a new mixed Fun Trivia quiz each day in your email. It's a fun way to start your day! That is, you must travel through a minimum of two other counties before you hit salty water!

In Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' why are some place names called "shire"? This one also sometimes used to get a -shire, probably dating back to the early Middle Ages when the Latin Dumnonia became the Old English Defenascir.

The Roman name for the area was Cornubia. Still, nearly there. Cumberland is another tribal name with links to the Welsh. It takes its name from the Cymry, the name of the Celtic inhabitants of a region that — like Cornwall, and Wales — was never really a part of the Anglo-Saxon world.

Cymry shares roots with Cymru, the Welsh name for Wales. The modern country of Cumbria , created in , includes Cumberland, as well as Westmorland and parts of Lancashire. The other is County Durham. Done at last. Except… The only public domain map of the counties I could find. Several times the map has been comprehensively re-organised, to create or abolish metropolitan counties or tinker with boundaries.

The source of the names of most of those modern counties are pretty obvious. They were named after cities Greater London , Greater Manchester , latterly Bristol , or rivers Avon , plus several of the above , or bits of counties South Yorkshire , West Yorkshire , North Yorkshire , East Riding of Yorkshire , and in one case a vague geographic region just to get out of using any name that might annoy the locals West Midlands.

That took a while. Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter as jonnelledge and also has a Facebook page now for some reason. Want more of this stuff? Follow CityMetric on Twitter or Facebook.

This article is from the CityMetric archive: some formatting and images may not be present. Jonn Elledge. I , 2 April Category : Counties. Navigation menu Personal tools Create account Log in. Namespaces Page Discussion. Views Read View source View history. This page was last modified on 27 December , at Privacy policy About Wikishire Disclaimers.

Armagh , Newry part. Greenlaw , Coldstream , Duns , Eyemouth , Lauder. Rothesay , Brodick , Lochranza , Millport.

Wick , Castletown , Halkirk , Thurso. Clackmannan , Alloa , Dollar , Tillicoultry , Tullibody. Cromarty , Ullapool. Ruthin , Abergele , Denbigh , Llangollen , Wrexham.