British counties

British counties, sometimes referred to as shires, are areas of the United Kingdom that were established for administration primarily in England by the Normans, with many counties being continuations of the Anglo-Saxon administrative units shires, and in Scotland mainly under David I (reigned 1124-1153). With the earliest shires formed in the 5th century, the most recent English county to be established was Lancashire in the 12th century.

The largest county in the United Kingdom is, by far, Yorkshire, with an area of around 6,081 square miles, which is also the most populous, with around 5.2 million people. The second-largest county in the UK is Inverness-shire, at 4,211 square miles in area, with the second-largest in England being Lincolnshire, at 2,687 square miles.

The role of counties in local government saw a decline in the 19th and 20th century, but contrary to popular opinion, the British counties were neither abolished nor did they have their boundaries changed by acts of parliament such as the Local Government Act 1888 or the like-named act of 1974, as an official statement by Prime Minister Edward Heath's government confirmed in 1974: "the new county boundaries are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of counties, nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change despite the different names adopted by the new administrative counties".

The various administrative subdivisions in the UK, being county council areas, unitary authority areas and London boroughs in England (which are all nearly functionally identical), are legally distinct from counties proper, and are not replacements for them. "Counties for the purposes of lieutenancy", which are often mistakenly (notably by Wikipedia) referred to as "ceremonial counties", do not replace the counties proper either.

Naming

Most county names in England date back to the Anglo-Saxon period. For the most part, they take the form of the county town suffixed with -shire; Derbyshire, therefore, is the County of Derby, for example. In some cases, the county town may have changed after the county was named, with Buckinghamshire (Old English Buccingahamscir), for instance, being named after that county's historical county town Buckingham, even if Aylesbury has served as the county town since the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century.

Other county names are even older. Perhaps the oldest is that of Orkney, the county of Scotland co-extensive with the Orkney Islands archipelago, whose name was recorded as Orcas in c. 300 BC by the Ancient Greek explorer Pytheas. The county name Kent dates back at least as far as 51 BC, being recorded then by Julius Caesar as Cantium. Some, such as Essex and Northumberland, reference Anglo-Saxon territorial divisions, the former continuing the name of the East Saxon kingdom (527–825 AD), and the latter ultimately originates with the Anglian kingdom Northumbria (651–954 AD), which at its territorial peak (700 AD) covered most of northern England and southern Scotland.