This toponymical list of counties of the United Kingdom is a list of the origins of the names of

counties of the United Kingdom The counties of the United Kingdom are subnational divisions of the United Kingdom, used for the purposes of administrative, geographical and political demarcation. The older term, ''shire'' is historically equivalent to county. By the Middle Ages ...

. For

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

it includes ancient and contemporary counties.

Background

Throughout the histories of the four

countries of the United Kingdom The United Kingdom, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), since 1922, comprises three constituent countries and a region: England, Scotland, and Wales (which collectively make up the region of Great Britain), as well as Nor ...

, a variety of languages have been used to name places. These languages were often used in parallel with each other. As a result, it is often difficult to assess the genuine

etymology Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...

of a placename, hence some of the entries below are assigned more than one meaning, depending on which language was used to originally give the place its name. One of the most common words used in county names in the United Kingdom is the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

shire Shire is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand. It is generally synonymous with county. It was first used in Wessex from the beginn ...

''. This is a West Saxon word meaning ''share/division''.

England

Northern Ireland

Scotland

Wales

References