Talk:County

Historical perspective

The article is very brief about counties in medieval times (and also in Early Modern times, especially in the Holy Roman Empire) when counties rather were nearly-independent territories under the rulership of a count, see e.g. County of Holland, County of Toulouse, County of Barcelona, and the article does not say anything about how these medieval counties developed into the modern administrative term. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:03, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Old remark but still true. I don't see any other articles specifically about the historical evolution of counties either.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:32, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The article lede sort of explains this matter, but it could perhaps be written more clearly. Basically, the short version is this: modern counties have no direct relationship to the mainland European medievsl counties. The word "county" was basically just borrowed into English from the mainland invaders, and began being used as a new term for the 'shires' that already existed in England. Thus, modern 'counties' came from 'shires' rather than from that which were originally called counties. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:5D57:A2A:70F7:A033 (talk) 04:37, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Confusing tag

I removed the {{confusing}} template on the page because I did not understand what it was saying. If it's going to be reinstated, please make it more clear. Regards, MediaKill13 (talk) 08:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

County = Okrug

There are two exactly same terms here on EN Wiki: This Latin County and Slavic Okrug. Should we merge these two? --Munja (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Canada

"Canada's five oldest provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island – are divided into counties." I removed the above. PEI is not one of Canada's five oldest provinces. It's seventh to join Canada. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shipman7 (talk • contribs) 02:16, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Shipman7: if that is the case, why wouldn't you simply revise it to state the following?

"Five of Canada's provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island – are divided into counties."

Hwy43 (talk) 02:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

County Council in Australia

The entry on 'county' in Australia appears to be incorrect. The term 'county council' appears to still be current as at http://hrcc.nsw.gov.au. If this is not the same as a 'county', fine, but something needs to be noted about this usage.

59.153.112.77 (talk) 01:40, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

"Cunty" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Cunty has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 July 24 § Cunty until a consensus is reached. SmokeSomeDrinkSomePopOne (talk) 15:14, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

is "and other purposes" vague?

What are "other" purposes? Political? Can we not be more concise about the county in the articles opener?

The credited source is the Chambers Dictionary, pub. 2005, now with an online edition where one can see that a entry for "county" is not so vague as perhaps it was in a 2005 print edition. We see that in both England and USA the purpose is administrative. And if used in another sense (in U.K.), an area of particular characteristics.

"county noun (counties) 1 any of the geographical divisions within England, Wales and Ireland that form the larger units of local government. Compare region (sense 2). 2 in the USA: the main administrative subdivision within a state. adj, derog, informal upper class; pertaining to the landed gentry.

ETYMOLOGY: 15c: from French conté, from Latin comes count."

It may have had a count and countess/courts and magistrates, with jurisdiction over the area/territory relating to governance. It may be a government unit empowered by corporate person-hood. It may be a state or sub-state administrative unit. PonapsqisHous (talk) 00:10, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

What about the so called ceremonial and/or traditional counties that no longer have an administrative purpose, but can for example still be used to address an envelope?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:35, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Good question. So what about them, say if legacy purpose is as a geographic identifier? if it's at all a matter of whether a territory has an administrative or political sort of purpose for it not to be a former county, perhaps since there's a current county, or another form of sub-state administration, should there be "other" purposes at all?

In the matter of whether a "ceremonial", or "traditional county" falls withing the meaning of the word, the Chambers online definition I've posted doesn't support it, suggesting administrative jurisdiction/holding power are central to the meaning. Sense 2 of "region"'s def is an administrative unit in Scotland during a time period. PonapsqisHous (talk) 18:42, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't follow.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Don't bother; the editor you're replying to is trying to win an argument he lost elsewhere about whether counties cease to exist if one of their functions ceases, in this case their function as a municipality, regardless of whether they still exist in law. G. Timothy Walton

There was even an RfC about the question. (talk) 20:06, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

What about them? The modifiers "ceremonial", "traditional", etc. are there for a purpose and these do not warrant consideration in the defining passage of an encyclopedic entry about counties, like in the dictionary, perhaps.

There is no expectations on who will and who will not follow, and a request for comment remains.

Having been given attention here by @G. Timothy Walton, it can be seen at the linked RfC and in related NB, Canada article local discussions about disestablished counties, that dated legislation (see County: New Brunswick) is sufficient to forcefully contend that "counties remain in use", when it is the territorial divisions (areas) that truly remain. The discussion about how central a tenant governance is to "county" cannot be avoided.

The erroneous line of thought is that because there remains a law describing territorial extents, subdivisions and government centres of counties which originate in colonial British America and are disestablished in modern New Brunswick, that the counties separated from their enabling bodies themselves remain. NB is only one of the American sub-state jurisdictions where former counties remain as vestigial. PonapsqisHous (talk) 00:46, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you know what's different about New Brunswick? The province never disestablished its counties by law. Never. You've tried all this folderol before and it never becomes more than one editor's strange obsession that the noun "county" can only have one connotation in New Brunswick, despite repeated use of the same counties by two levels of government long after the municipalities were disincorporated. Just give it a rest; the only way you'll ever get anyone to agree with you is to create a sockpuppet. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 01:02, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Could it be that they have to contend with you and your sockpuppets? PonapsqisHous (talk) 01:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

This is clearly an argument from another article, and related to some specific legal complication in one country. Please don't disrupt this article, which for example also covers England, where it is clear that counties can exist without being administrative.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I felt a need to give some warning. You may wish to examine the recent revisions to the article. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 13:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

It is not, tho it is related. Unfortunately, it's clear there are discouragements to consider the question of improving the article. Some direction is needed for how to go about it.

This contention passes the smell test. It is true. it is in the interest of the general good of the article. It seeks discussion on the topic and to build up editors. PonapsqisHous (talk) 18:48, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The heading under Canada, New Brunswick might read just as Ireland's description were it not for the subject being the dominion of exuberant editors PonapsqisHous (talk) 04:50, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

The other editor in this discussion already made an excellent point. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 05:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

which types of administrative divisions should be in this article?

We have other articles for modern administrative divisions, and so shouldn't this one only be about divisions which have some specific reason to be associated with the term counties? In some case this could simply be a translation tradition, but then we should explain that in each case. In other cases such as Belgian provinces, they were once literally counties (after some adjustments). But I think some of the topics on this article belong in a more general article about medium sized administrative divisions? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:35, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any advantage to this, and a lot of disadvantages for users who aren't already interested in the minutiae of various levels of administration. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 19:52, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Can you explain more? To me it seems to be precisely because of such concerns, that we need to be careful. If we allow this article to be about lots of different administrative levels in different countries, with different names, and no particular connection to the term county, then isn't this an article about administrative levels generally? In any case there are lots of ways to define the boundaries of each article, but there should be some kind of agreed boundaries, or else we will end up with dozens of overlapping articles, and anyone coming to Wikipedia looking for a specific topic won't know where to go. Normally we should aim to make each article relatively detailed about one topic, and then make sure there are lots of handy links to related articles like in this case shire. At the moment this article has a reasonably large number of small sub-sections some of which have very little to do with counties?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 04:30, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Since county is used for anything from (historic) independent polities to rural municipality equivalents, trying to limit the scope to a particular level of government would mean removing material that properly belongs in an article titled county. Moving the "translates to county" stuff to a table would make sense and shorten the article, but expecting someone who needs to look up county to already understand its relative administrative level or size doesn't seem to serve readers well. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you meant. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 12:23, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, moving "translates to county" (or evolved from counties?) stuff to a table, and of course helping our readers get to the main articles, seems no problem to me, and in some ways is more radical than what I suggested. But what if we have terms that are not even commonly translated as county, and never have been? (Actually at the moment it is hard to check because people have added sections which do not explain what the connection to the main term is. Another proposal here is that every term given should have some such explanation.) I agree with your last sentence, and kind of see it as the same reasoning I was using. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:07, 9 September 2025 (UTC)