How Did The Counties Of England Get Their Names?

support name explained on patreon for ad-free videos exclusive podcasts and blog posts and to help choose what names get explained click the link in the description we've explained many many times how exactly the nation of the united kingdom works it split over two main land masses the island of great britain and part of the island of ireland and across these two landmasses the united kingdom's risen to four smaller nations england scotland wales and northern ireland however things can of course break down even further as these four home nations split like many countries into counties it's the counties of just one of these nations we will be looking into today those being the counties of the biggest and most populated home nation of the united kingdom my home nation of england england is made up of 48 counties by some counts anyway and each seems to have its own cultural identity and image and their names are perhaps one of england's biggest export the names of these counties pop up all over languages in the names of certain foods like the cornish pasty and cumberland sausage to breeds of dog like the staffordshire bull terrier and of course these names are used as names in other parts of the world like the u.s state of new hampshire even if you aren't from england and have never been here it's likely many of these names will ring a bell in your brain these counties also vary from huge expanses of land to just singular cities in their greater areas so today let's look into how the counties of england got their names and hopefully one day in the future we can look into the counties of scotland wales and northern ireland too however just to make things clear what counties am i covering exactly as i said i aim to tackle 48 counties but by some counts there are more unless it's because these county borders differ depending on circumstances and many other things i'm focusing on the ceremonial counties which were formalized in 1997 as these are the traditional counties of england most people have heard of day-to-day though many of these counties are split into smaller patches like how devon is the ceremonial county but in reality it's governed as three counties devon plymouth and torbay it's a minor detail but i know some of you in the comments will want to point it out and speaking of devon let's start just west of that county in the deep south west of england with cornwall this county has a very strong unique identity even with their own language and their name is fought to come from that language with the name of a tribe that once lived here the kenovi this name is fought to mean horned people due to cornwall's horn-like shape and as mentioned we have devon to cornwall's east known for its beaches and dartmoor the name is twofold to come from the celtic natives the dumoni whose name is fought to relate to the deep valleys of devon northeast of devon we have somerset a place best known for its cider and the village of cheddar which yes the cheese is named after the name sounds like the season of summer for a good reason as it comes from old english and means the people who live at summerton with summerton being a settlement there this settlement's name is what means summer settlement hence why it relates to the season the city of bristol and its surrounding towns is actually a county unto itself bristol is a famous city known for being the birthplace of blackbeard clifton suspension bridge skins and ottoman animation the name does actually relate to bridges fought to mean the meeting place by the bridge in relation to the many bridges across the river avon going back south however southeast of devon we have a dorset another seaside county it's the pebbles of one of its beaches as to where the name is for to possibly come from it may be from britonic and mean place with fist-sized pebbles which are very big pebbles indeed and it's from here that we run into a word forming element you're going to be sick of by the end of this video shire for my calculations 24 of these 48 county names in wilshire that's half of them in fact sometimes the counties of england are known as the shires of england and it's a word that inspired tolkien to name the realm of the hobbits the shire this is an old english term and simply means things like province stewardship district so it's no surprise to it pop up so much a lot of the time the part that proceeds shy in these county names relates to a major settlement in that county so apologies if i get a little repetitive with these the first child we come across is a wiltshire the home of stonehenge wilshere is named after the town of wilton in the county which in turn comes from the river wiley that goes through the county then we have berkshire which the internet tells me is known for sheep which simply means hilly place and below berkshire we have hampshire home of the historic cities of southampton and portsmouth and the hamp in hampshire comes from the hamp in southampton with hampton popping up often in england and means a water meadow moving away from shais for a moment we have the isle of wight england's only entirely island-based county there's a few ideas as to where this name comes from but the most popular theory is that it relates to lifting slash raising as the island is raised out of the sea and east of hampshire and the isle of wight back onto the mainland we have sussex which is actually split into the two counties of east and west sussex east sussex is the famous city of brighton and west sussex has well me this name relates to britain's ancient residents of the saxons who came from northern germany such denmark it simply means a land of the south saxons and there used to be a land of west saxons too with wessex and we still have a land of east accent which we'll cover in a moment and further southeastern england we have kent famous for dover and its white cliffs as this is the part of england closest to europe it has a name of roman greek roots though it's fought to ultimately derive from an old british celtic word meaning coastal district due to its location moving west of kent we have surrey potheads will know this county as the likely home of the fictional little winger where harry potter himself lives surrey simply means a southerly district as it's south of the most famous place in the uk london and as for london it's split into two counties the city of london is its ancient core and greater london and its surrounding boroughs like croydon in the south and enfield in the north we don't know where exactly the name london comes from but there's a range of ideas while being named after an ancient king called lud to it come from ancient celtic words meaning wide a flowing river in relation to the thames as for why one of these counties has a city of attached to it and while the other has greater attached to it i'm sure you can figure out and as mentioned we have the land of the east saxons that is with essex uk tv fans were known as county for governance they see and the reality show was states that essex is in fact the only way this isn't the case however as west of essex we come back to the shies with hertfordshire this county is named after the settlement of hartford with this name meaning crossing for deer a heart is an old name for a stack and a ford is a part of a river low enough to cross and as for buckinghamshire this too comes from the town of buckingham with this town's name with ham like in hampton meaning water meadow and the former part is thought to come from an ancient landowner called a booker and yes it was the duke of buckingham who the queen's primary dig was named in honor of oxfordshire the county is once again named after the city of oxford most known for its university of course and this is a pretty easy one to figure out especially as we've already covered hertford if hartford was a fort crossing for heart deer then it should come as no surprise that oxford is a ford crossing for oxen the gloucester in gloucestershire comes from a town yet again and it's fought to mean bright place though what was so bright about it i'm not too sure but some think this bright relates to bright in the clever sense of the word not in the well-lit sense and just north of here on the welsh border is herefordshire named after the town of hereford we have yet another crossing but for hera o'hara is an old term for formation of soldiers so the name means soldier crossing we're still carrying on with shires with worcestershire most famous for their source and its tricky pronunciation once again it's named after a town that being worcester which is believed to come from a name of a tribe who once lived there like oxford warwickshire is too well known for its highly regarded university in the town of warwick with rorick meaning dwelling by the way with away being a small man-made dam in a river and then we have northamptonshire once again with hampton which means water meadow so here we have a northern water meadow which went on to be the name of a city which went on to be the name of a county bedfordshire is named after the market town of bedford which once again relates to a ford crossing and possibly an old saxon chief of this land called a bidder not an actual crossing for actual beds i'm afraid and cambridge shared to its east is named after cambridge which is too known for its university the bridge in cambridge relates to an actual bridge that being a bridge over the river cam the cam bridge this is incredibly logical etymology we can take a brief break from shars luckily with norfolk and suffolk these names simply mean norfolk and the south vogue which are too incredibly simple to understand and then we have england's smallest county rutland no one actually knows what happens here the name is fought to possibly mean rota's land with a lot of being an old chief in the land their name is thought to possibly mean cheerful bright which is unexpectedly pleasant back to the shires i'm afraid however as west of rutland is leicestershire home of the unexpected underdogs of the premier league a few years back the count is named after the city of leicester this is the first time we have spotted the cester chester suffix this means town but specifically a roman town so the city's name is thought to mean a roman town by the river ligo which is thought to be a former name of the river soar next up we have the dulles name county the west midlands named so due to being the west of the midlands however it's full of popular cities such as birmingham commentary and wolverhampton and to the north of the west midlands we have staffordshire popular for their dog breed here we have yet another ford with the former part of this name meaning riverbank shaw as for shropshire this too is named after a settlement though that testament is now called shrewsbury with shrewsbury fought to mean the fortified place in the scrub cheshire is named after the city of chester which as we mentioned simply means a roman town why lewis cowell named his book's cat after this county however i'm not too sure derbyshire is named after the place of derby which comes from old english and means a deer village robin hoods in nottinghamshire is named after the city of nottingham which means homestead of snot's people with us not being a former chief here not the most pleasant name i'm sure we can all agree and lincolnshire is named after the city of lincoln which is a latin name coming from a word meaning pool slash a lake apologies for whizzing for these sharks just then they're just starting to make my head spin though the biggest shire is of course yorkshire the york part of this name comes from the city of york and is fought to mean utree estate yorkshire is so large that's actually split into four counties three of these are simply called north west and south yorkshire the east yorkshire is actually called the easter riding of yorkshire the other parts of yorkshire are known as writings too but the word isn't present in their official names riding is a term of viking origin and simply means a third part as historically yorkshire will split into three of these ridings it makes sense for the world to be of viking roots as yorkshire really was the hub of the viking conquest of britain next up we have the county of greater manchester which contains perhaps the second most well-known city in england outside of london manchester the greater part relates to the wider area but manchester itself is actually thought to mean breast-like hill due to the shape of hills in the area i feel like more people should be talking about this west of greater manchester we have merseyside which contains another famous english city liverpool home of the beatles of course the county's name comes from the river mersey with the name mersey meaning boundary river maybe because it's so close to the welsh border and we have one final shire lancashire which is named after the city of lancaster which means roman town on the river loon continuing up north we have cumbria the north westernmost point of england and we actually have an entire video about this name somewhere on the channel this is actually a celtic name that means land of the comely the people who live there this relates closely to the welsh name for whales commonly as they are both platonic words meaning fellow countrymen easter cumbria we have county dharam this is named after the town of dharam in the county and the name simply means a city on a hill as it is well a city on a hill and above durham is the county of tine and ware which contains most noticeably the wonderful city of newcastle upon tyne this county is simply named after the two rivers that run through it the tine and the where and finally we reach england's northernmost point northumberland this name is pretty darn simple especially once you know there's a river called the humber nearby this name simply means the place north of the river humber and there you have it from cornwall and its horn people manchester and is not safe for work hills and the many many shires this has been a journey across my home nation of england and how its counties got their names thank you to all my patrons who support name explain on a monthly basis patron is vital to name explain and donating just two dollars a month allows you to enjoy ad-free videos and bonus patron exclusive content it also allows you to help choose what names get explained in upcoming videos and get your name here with all these awesome people thank you so much for all the support you guys give name explain hello or thank you so much reaching the end of the video check out another video and subscribe stay in the loop on all things name explain you can find me on twitter i'm at name explain yt on instagram i'm also named explain yt and on facebook just search name explain anyway i hope you enjoyed this video and once again thank you all so much

Channel: Name Explain

Views: 194,878

Rating: 4.6884928 out of 5

Keywords: name explain, etymology, language, word origins, englands counties, educational video, geography video

Id: 28UFIX0rjVY

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020