County

Originally, in continental Europe, a county was the land under the jurisdiction of a count. Counts are called "earls" in post-Celtic Great Britain and Ireland - the term is from Old Norse jarl and was introduced by the Vikings - but there is no correlation between "county" and "earldom." Rather, the term "county," from French comt?, was simply used by the Normans after 1066 to replace the native English term scir ("sheer") or "shire," in Modern English. A shire was an administrative division of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom (Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, etc.), usually named after its administrative centre (e.g., Gloucester > Gloucestershire, Worcester > Worcestershire, etc.).

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Thus, whereas the word comt? denoted a sovereign jurisdiction in the original French, the English word "county" denotes a subdivision of a sovereign jurisdiction.

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Count: :This page is about the Western style nobility; for the baseball term, see count (baseball)....

Earl: An Earl or Jarl was an Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian title, meaning chieftain and it referred especially to chieftains set to rule a territory in a king's stead. In Scandinavia, it became obsolete in the Middle Ages, whereas, in Britain, it became synonymous with count....

Great Britain: :For an explanation of often confusing terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology)....

County related Images and Photos (experimental)

County Line III	Stafford County I	Macon County Line	Bucks County Farm
Sonoma County Road	Sampson County Crossroad	Milwaukee County Stadium	Suffolk County New York c.1895
Bloom County - Meet Deathtongue	Orange County Choppers Book (Hardcover)	The Orange County Hounds	Superbad - Clark County Popo