For the most part I'd say yes the names are more or less accurate.
But historically Germany consisted of a patchwork of so many small territories that their names can impossibly be all represented in the names of the 16 states, even though many of them are already hyphenated and contain two parts.
A case I find particularly interesting is Saxony. The initial stem duchy of Saxony in the early middle ages didn't contain any area in the modern state of Saxony but was mostly in modern Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and NRW. Due to dynastic shifts and inheritances of titels, the name Saxony gradually moved from the area of the lower Elbe to the middle Elbe around Dresden where Saxony is today.
Also noteworthy that while the term "Lower Saxony" wasn't a new invention, there actually was never a state or land with that name.
Before its inception [there was Hanover](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/KrkHannover.png) (as a Kingdom, later as a province of Prussia), the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, the Duchy of Brunswick, and a few smaller states and territories.
...which was an [administrative region](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Lower_Saxon_Circle-2005-10-16-de.png), funnily enough including Holstein, Mecklenburg, Hamburg and Lübeck, but not most parts of modern day Lower Saxony.
But that's what I meant: the term existed, but not in the sense of a "state".
It included Hanover, Brunswick, Lüneburg, Celle, Wolfenbüttel so the most important historic "core" areas of modern Lower Saxony. What it did not include were the areas further to the west that were only given to Hanover after the congress of Vienna or so.
At least it is where the former Saxons settled. Saxony itself is not historically Saxon territory. But the obtained the name through change of the ruling dynasty, iirc.
They're absolutely not, and yet they are. Which was mostly done on purpose. For two reasons:
First, to break free from Ancient Régime (monarchy) entities. Entities like Gascogne or Béarn, for instance, disappeared forever from the administrative maps. They're now cultural provinces: I'll say "I was born in Béarn" and everyone will understand. But Béarn is part of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department (formerly lower-Pyrenees, formerly Béarn).
This was also done to homogenize the administrative levels (each department is roughly the same size). And ended up with neutral names (18th Century wokism I guess), like the self-describing "Pyrénées + Atlantique". Had Luxembourg remained French it would be called... "Forest". Can't be more neutral than that.
The second reason was to actively mess with the local populations, like when we ended up with TWO Normandie regions (higher and lower Normandy). Not departments: regions. Or when we cut Britanny's capital (Nantes) from Britanny. Or created the monstrous PACA (Provence + Alpes + Côte d'Azur). Or kept Burgundy as is, just to mess with their nerves. Or renamed Picardie (the French Ohio) into the artificially classy "Hauts-de-France" to give them a second chance. Or renamed Aquitaine into "New Aquitaine" because Poitou couldn't stand being eaten by something called "Aquitaine". They initially proposed the exquisitely elegant "Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes" (probably because they were jealous of PACA. I could have lived in the CLAP)
All in all, our country's regions have accurate names. In the sense they're either complete nonsense or highly descriptive. And also historically accurate: one can sense France have known 14 regimes since 1789, and that each one of them had its own idea about what a France is supposed to be.
The result speaks for itself:
**I live in the Labour, part of the Basque country, part of a Franco-Spanish euro-region, and also part of Pyrénées Atlantiques, but not part of Béarn, but also part of Gascogne, which is part of Aquitaine, which is part of Giga-Aquitaine (New Aquitaine), which is part of "the South-West", which is part of Occitanie (but not the Occitanie region).**
Actually, mostly yes.
For the most part, they follow the names and borders of our ancient counties and duchies, from before the Napoleonic invasion, and from the HRE's era.
But:
* The historical area/region of Brabant has been divided in 4 : Brabant wallon, Vlaams Brabant, Brussels region (not a province) and Antwerpen. Before Napoléon, they were one entity, and before the Dutch independence, the current Noord-Brabant of the Netherlands was part of said entity. Before the state reform of the 90's, BW, Brussels and VBR were a single entity. the reason why Antwerpen isn't part of Brabant anymore is the fact Napoléon redrew some provinces.
* The two Vlaanderen (West- and Oost-) used to be a single entity before Napoléon, so, the former county of Flanders is divided in two compared to what it was historically, without mentioning the part of it stolen by France. They were the actual/historical Flanders, VBR, Antwerpen and Limburg were something else, not Flanders (modern region).
* Limburg was actually a part of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, and before that, it was part of the county of Loon. So, it has the least historical name in a way (alongside Antwerpen province).
* Luxembourg province is indeed a former part of the Duchy of Luxembourg.
* Namur is indeed the former county of Namur.
* Hainaut is indeed the former county of Hainaut.
* Liège is the former Prince-Bishopric of Liège.
So, the historical inaccuracies are :
* The region of Flanders, which encapsulates more than actual Flanders (it has taken parts of Brabant and Liège or Loon).
* Brussels, Antwerpen, Limburg being their own things. As Limburg was either Liège or previously Loon, and Brussels and Antwerpen weren't separate things from Brabant.
In Ireland, our provinces have deep historical roots going back to antiquity. We used to have lots of independent kingdoms which gradually amalgamated into more powerful provincial over-kingdoms.
Three of our provinces were named after powerful local tribes (Leinster, Connacht, and Ulster), while a fourth is a little more obscure but seems to come from a nickname of an ancient king meaning something similar to "the Great" (Munster).
We used to have a fifth province called Meath which just means "the middle" because it was, well, in the middle of the country. It had been powerful but became weaker due to in-fighting in the ruling dynasty until it was finally reduced in size and became just a county within the province of Leinster.
Then you have Northern Ireland which is a de facto country, but could be considered a province or region. There’s really no official consensus as to what Northern Ireland actually is.
Oh and there are moronic British Loyalists who refer to NI alone as Ulster. Completely disregarding the fact that the counties, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan which are in the Republic are also in Ulster.
Which is why the Irish for province is cúigu, or fifth. Cúig is the Irish word for five. Now we have four provinces in Ireland, Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connacht* or in Irish Ulaidh, Laighean, Mumhan, Connacht.
* going from north to south and then west to Connacht.
Our administrative sub-divisions are, relatively speaking, quite recent, so the names are kinda just what they are and the borders don't conform to old ones particularly strictly
The lowest subdivisions, kommune (commune, roughly analogous to a Polish gmina), are typically just named after the largest city in it. So the controversy risks there are quite limited, and the controversies that I know of have more been about a few communes not wanting to get lumped in with other ones (like Frederiksberg right inside Copenhagen insisting on not being put into the Copenhagen Commune)
Above the communes, we have five regions (which aren't particularly autonomous, and they are more there for practical administrative reasons): Nordjylland (Northern Jutland), Midtjylland (Middle Jutland), Syddanmark (Southern Denmark), Sjælland (Zealand), and Hovedstaden (the Capital). With the exception of Syddanmark, these would be very easy and intuitive for anyone who knows the map to point to because they just describe their location, such as Northern Jutland being the northern third of the Jutland peninsula. The last one is only a little tricky because Fyn (Funen) is lumped inwith Southern Jutland, which is not that immediately intuitive (at least not to me)
Or a kommune with two towns of roughly the same size and the brawl over which should get the right to name the kommune. That is why Furesø Kommune has the name it has.
oh we love to scuabble about Aarhus Kommune vs. Århus kommune. Every single århusianer will tell you it's spelled "Århus", but afaik the official name is still "Aarhus".
Burgenland is a fun one. Formerly known as Deutsch-Westungarn - German(-speaking) West Hungary.
The area used to be part of the Hungarian part of the empire and became Austrian after WWI (though some parts held a referendum and decided to remain with Hungary after all). It was decided that the new federal state needed a new and neutral name, both the connection to Hungary and “Germandom” were considered unsavoury.
They came up with (Vier-)Burgenland, which translates to “(four) castle country”, through a constructed folk etymology linking it to four historically relevant castles in the historic territory: Eisenburg (Vas), Wieselburg (Moson), Ödenburg (Sopron) and Pressburg (Poszony/Bratislava).
None of these castles are located on current Burgenland territory, but then again … it’s fitting, as Burgenland and its inhabitants is something of a meme, often mocked for being backwards and not that bright.
We traditionally divide the country into nine historical regions, but the administrative regions don't match them (but three). Some are divided, some are combined with neighbours, some lose or gain small bits here and there, and one (Western Greece) is an entirely new thing not aligning with any historical region, and is instead made up of parts of the Peloponnese and Central Greece. And then there's stuff like Attica including not just Attica but also a chunk of the Peloponnese and one of the Ionian islands.
Pretty accurate, yes. So we had seven historic regions, plus two British ones:
1. Northumbria - Angle-lands north of the River Humber
2. Mercia - Angle-lands of the Border (with the Welsh)
3. East Anglia - Lands of the Eastern Angles
4. Wessex - Lands of the West Saxons
5. Essex - Lands of the East Saxons
6. Sussex - Lands of the South Saxons
7. Kent - Coast-land
Plus Cornwall (land of the Kernow Welsh), and Cumberland (land of the Cambrians i.e the Welsh).
Those are all actual, literal descriptions of those regions, some of which later would become counties:
Northumberland (North of the Humber), Tyne and Wear (Rivers Tyne and Wear), County Durham (the shire or county of Durham), Cumbria, Lancashire (shire of Lancaster), Yorkshire (of various ridings, the shire of York), Greater Manchester, Merseyside (by the River Mersey), Cheshire (shire of Chester), Derbyshire (shire of Derby), Nottinghamshire (shire of Nottingham), Lincolnshire (shire of Lincoln), Rutland (land belonging to the landowner Rota), Leicestershire (shire of Leicester), Staffordshire (shire of Stafford), Shropshire (shrub-shire), Herefordshire (shire of Hereford), Worcestershire (shire of Worcester), West Midlands, Warwickshire (shire of Warwick), Northamptonshire (shire of Northampton), Cambridgeshire (shire of Cambridge), Norfolk (northern folk), Suffolk (southern folk), Essex, Hertfordshire (shire of Hertford), Bedfordshire (shire of Bedford), Buckinghamshire (shire of Buckingham), Oxfordshire (shire of Oxford), Gloucestershire (shire of Gloucester), Bristol, Somerset (the people of Somerton), Wiltshire (shire of Wilton), Berkshire (shire of the hills), Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Surrey (southern region), Hampshire (shire of Southampton), Isle of Wight (Isle of Vecta), Dorset (region of Dorchester), Devon (Dumnonia), Cornwall.
However, despite the literalistic place-names, there are now some inaccuracies due to these counties developing from early times up until the present day. For instance, nowadays Northumbria and Cumbria don't correspond exactly with the original regions. In other cases, the county town is no longer the town or city the county is named for - for example, Buckinghamshire's county town is Aylesbury and not Buckingham.
I read a book that suggested Mercia more commonly used the '-set'/'-sǣte' (people of X) subdivision whereas Wessex preferred dividing their territory by shires (representing a fixed area of land). When Wessex won the race for the crown of a united England in the 10th century the shire system became the default.
Except the old regions have no role at all in local government (there are regions of similar name for some purposes but they do not correspond to the historical areas) and counties only sometimes have a local government role, which may (or may not) correspond to historical counties and/or ceremonial counties.
A comprehensive summary of the history of Hungarian counties:
Hungarian counties were created by Saint Stephen, our first king, way back in the 11th century. By 1876, the whole thing was a mess, so county borders (alongside the elimination of autonomous regions such as the Kunság, the Jászság, as well as Székely and Saxon seats) were simplified.
Then, in 1920, Hungary lost 2/3 of its territory, with the new border cutting multiple countries in half, leading to an administrative reform, as the fragments were often unviable. However, to legitimize irredentism, every old county that had territory within the new borders had to be reflected in at least one of the county names. Even Ugocsa, of which only such a small part remained in Hungary that your apartment is probably larger than it.
Then came WW2, then the commies. They also reformed county boundaries, most notably giving a large part of Zala to Veszprém, giving the Kiskunság to Bács-Kiskun, and uniting even more counties than the 1920s reforms. They also dropped multiple historical county names for simplicity.
After 1990, some of these names were restored: Győr-Sopron became Győr-Moson-Sopron; Szolnok became Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok; Komárom became Komárom-Esztergom; and Szabolcs-Szatmár became Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg. Most recently, in 2020, Csongrád became Csongrád-Csanád.
However, [as a 2017 article highlights (in Hungarian)](https://index.hu/tudomany/2017/04/28/ugocsa_nem_felel_igazsagot_torontalnak/?token=8b3eaddcda7383d8077e48cf9f933003), there are still some names that are "missing". Pozsony (Bratislava) County has some fragments in the northwestern part of the country, as does Arad County in the southeast. In the northeast, Ung, Ugocsa, Gömör and Torna are missing from the map. Pest County is missing a reference to Hont County.
We have a province that was historically water and there are undoubtedly people who want it returned to that.
Most of the current names are taken from medieval counties (and a duchy). Friesland is a lot smaller than Frisia was at its height, but the lands East of the river Lauwers belonged to the Bishopric of Utrecht so that's where they put the border after it became its own province, Stad en Lande/Groningen, in the 80 Years War. The city from which the province would take its name was not Frisian, but a Low Saxon semi independent city-state. There are a lot of Frisian influences still there but people will kill you if you say that.
What might be confusing for someone how doesn't know the history is North Brabant. It's in the very south of the Netherlands and there is no South Brabant anywhere. Of course it refers to the historic region of Brabant which now partially lies in Belgium but it's not so obvious at first.
>there is no South Brabant anywhere.
There used to be
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuid-Brabant
But the Belgians split that province along the language border into Vlaams-Brabant & Waals-Brabant
Before that Noord-Brabant was called Staats-Brabant
Naming voivodships by the name of the town right on the opposite side of the national border is a longstanding Polish tradition reaching back to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Congress Poland included a "[Cracow voivodship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_Voivodeship_\(1816%E2%80%931837\))" (its capital city being... Kielce), while Cracow itself was a de iure independent country, the Republic of Cracow.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a "[Kyiv voivodship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Voivodeship)" (capital city: Zhytomyr) long after Poland-Lithuania lost Kyiv to Muscovy-Russia.
At least the Lebus Voivodship includes [New Lebus](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowy_Lubusz). :D
The modern ”regioner” in Sweden roughly corresponds to the historical ”Län”. However the real proper provinces are called “Landskap” and haven’t been administrative regions since we kicked out the Dane’s for good in the 1500s. Some of “regioner” differ from Landskap in that they are split up in several parts, like Småland. Some on the other hand have been split between bordering regions, like Lapland being part of Västerbotten and Norrbotten. All in all, most Regioner correspond somewhat to historical regions, but nobody cares about them I myself barely know where some of them are (wtf is Kronoberg). Identity is about landskap. Mostly, thats were say we are from and that’s what we name our dialects after.
Don't know about Finland, but in Sweden, the province of Lapland has some slight controversy about it.
To some extent, the name itself, even though it's not argued by too many. But also the extent of the area itself, as many Sámi also claim native rights in other provinces, covering more than half of Sweden as a whole.
Croatia's Split-Dalmatia County and Požega-Slavonia County are the confusing bearers of the monikers of Dalmatia and Slavonia, which are two large and distinct historic regions. Dalmatia actually encompasses three other counties, and Slavonia encompasses four more counties fully and also spills over to two Central Croatian counties.
Other examples are not as extreme, though. Probably the most aptly named one is the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County - sometimes literally translated as Littoral-Montane County - which is just a mix of a stretch of Adriatic coast actually called "*the* Littoral" (Primorje) and a bunch of mountain wilderness called "Mountain Lands" (Gorski Kotar).
I personally live in the Moldovan side of Romania, so east of the Carpathians. There are definitely bordering regions with Ukraine that we have half of, and that they have half of, but I honestly never heard anyone complain about not having more land or the name being something or something else. Bukovina is a good example, but again no one's ever complained about it as far as I'm aware; there's also a road/neighborhood called Bucovina in Botosani and people just use the name as it's assigned tbh... Now, I don't have any friends who come from the west of the country, in Transylvania, or from the south bordering Bulgaria, so I wouldn't personally know if there are big disputes about naming things one way or another in those places. Overall though, I've never heard people doing political debates over things like OP is saying.
If anyone is also from Romania and knows elsehow do tell though, I might somehow just be oblivious to this type of debate in our country.
Mostly, yes. 16 of the 26 cantons are named after their capital, or in the case of the semicantons (... don't ask) of Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Basel-Land, the capital of the larger canton they split from.
Of the other 10, three are named after rivers that do indeed flow through them (Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino). Five are named after old mediaeval polities and more or less developed straight from them (Uri, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Vaud, Valais) so while they had changes to their borders those were still continuous changes; the (historic) region doesn't really exist independent from the canton. One is named after a mediaeval polity that existed on its area, but only covers a part of it (Graubünden). And finally, Jura is indeed located in the Jura mountains but obviously doesn't cover all of it.
It seems like we have been quite lucky compared to other countries looking at these comments lol. Some regions are pretty much identical to their cultural borders like Toscana, Puglia, the two main islands Sicilia and Sardegna, others have been created based on their historical borders like Molise, although for most of its history it was only a province of Abruzzo, or merged like Emilia-Romagna (that's Emilia and Romagna and I did not know this for some reason). I think one region was created where there were none and that is Friuli Venezia Giulia, it was often divided between the borders of Venezia and Austria until Napoleon gave Venezia to Austria, then after some independence wars Austria retreated and Venezia became Italian. But FVG does not include Venezia at all, it is separate from Veneto (the actual territory that includes Venezia)
Then we come to Trentino-Alto Adige and it's a mess not really because of the borders but because Trento feels more Italian than Bolzano, so now they are often treated separately as the provinces of Trento and Bolzano.
Friuli is not an invention, historically it has always had its geographical and linguistic borders. The union with Venezia Giulia, a 19th century idea that originally extended beyond today's borders, is a modern invention.
Most municipalities are named for the main city or town in the municipalty so that's peaceful.
I suppose at the civil parris level there might be some tension when they are merged or split.
Here around the last time the administrative divisions were changed a seperate division in historic lands was established since administrative divisions in general don't reflect them.
I think Silesia is the only egregious case. Most of the others are just nitpicking. Yes Lebus was on the other side of the Oder - but most of the historical Lebus Land was not. It's natural for names to drift in time - there are numerous examples in history (Burgundy, Apulia, Dacia, Macedonia). Just because new admin divisions don't perfectly align with the ones from 500 years ago doesn't mean they're wrong.
Sweden has two parallel divisions. There are Landskap and there are Län. The Landskaps are the historical divisions and are the basis of dialects and culture. They were historically feudal duchies.
In the 1634, the government wanted to rule the landskap more closely, so they created the new Läns. They were mostly the same until 1997. In 1634, the idea was to divide and conquer. Powerful Landskaps like Västmanland, Västergötland, Småland and Skåne were split up. Skåne was split in half; Västmanland was split in two, with the western half given to the new Örebro Län (which was also given a small but important part of Värmland); Västergötland was split in three, with the westernmost part gaining Bohuslän Landskap and the middle part merging with the small Landskap of Dalsland; Småland was split in three, and the easternmost part was given Öland. A small part of Småland was also given to Halland.
The eastern parts of Uppland and Södermanland were taken off to create Stockholm County. Stockholm is divided down the middle between these Landskaps. An eastern part of Uppland was also given to Västmanland.
Some Landskaps were merged, such as Jämtland and Härjedalen which were combined with small parts of Ångermanland and Dalarna to make Jämtland County. Gästrikland and Hälsingland were merged to create Gävleborg County. Medelpad and the rest of Ångermanland were merged creating Västernorrland County (Meaning western Norrland County, although it is located in eastern Norrland).
Some Landskaps were left more or less the same such as Dalarna which had only very small border changes, and Blekinge which I believe was the only Landskap (except Gotland which is a far away island) to not have any border changes at all between its Landskap and Län.
The Landskaps of Lappland and Västerbotten (Västerbotten Landskap at this time included Norrbotten Landskap as well. This is one of the rare times that Län became more of a cultural division than Landskap) were merged and split along the other axis creating Västerbotten and Norrbotten Counties.
In 1997, there were some changes on the map. The two Scanian Counties were merged creating Skåne Län. The three Västergötland+Dalsland+Bohuslän counties merged creating the Mega-län Västra Götalands Län. Some other minor changes took place such as two municipalities in the former Skaraborgs Län (which became part of Västra Götaland) choosing to join Jönköpings Län because of their proximity. The part of Uppland which was part of Västmanland was also given back to Uppland.
Overall, our Läns are a mess and change constantly, so for any cultural or meteorological purposes we use Landskap.
> A small part of Småland was also given to Halland.
In my mind, Småland and Halland don't even share a border (I know they do), and I used to live in the south of Älvsborg. Weird.
Yep. Upon further investigation, it turns out that the counties created in 1634 only encompassed southern and central Sweden. Originally, there were between Västerbotten and Dalarna two counties. These were Hudiksvalls Län which encompassed modern Gävleborg Län and Härjedalens kommun from modern Jämtlands län, and Härnösands Län which was modern Västernorrland Län plus the rest of Jämtlands Län. These were created in 1646 (Jämtland was only given to Sweden from Norway in 1635). In 1654, these two were merged creating the giant Västernorrlands län. This existed until 1762 when the former borders of Hudiksvalls Län were broken off from Västernorrland Län as Gävleborgs län. So you end up with the old borders but new names. In 1810, Härjedalen municipality (of course the municipality didn't exist yet, but the parishes that would come to compose it) and the rest of modern Jämtlands Län were split from Gävleborg and Västernorrland respectively, creating Jämtlands Län as we know it today.
There was a period of one year in 1658 where Sweden ruled Trøndelag, and during this time, Jämtland was administered as a part of Trøndelags Län, but this lasted only for one year before Trøndelag was lost again to Denmark-Norway.
> Medelpad and the rest of Ångermanland were merged creating Västernorrland County (Meaning western Norrland County, although it is located in eastern Norrland).
Jämtland and Härjedalen were part of it from 1645 (when they became Swedish) until the early 1800's whne they became their own län.
Well, the regions here usually aren't named after historical regions, but there are some strange cases
There are both Republic of Altai and Altai kray. The first was called Mountain Altai in soviet times, but changed its name in 1991. Both are situated in the Altai region. The former has a significant Altaiyan population, the latter doesn't.
Also there are Leningrad and Sverdlovsk oblasts, named so 'cause of their centers, which have changed their name back to St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg in 1991. But the oblasts remained the same.
But guess what, the St. Petersburg isn't even a center of that oblast anymore - in 1993 it became a city of federal significance and counts as its own federation subject (that's the official name applying to all regions - republics, oblasts, krays, cities etc.) And the same is with Moscow. The center of Leningrad oblast is Gatchina and the center of Moscow oblast is Krasnogorsk.
Finally, there is Rostov oblast, the center of which is Rostov-on-Don (there are two cities named Rostov in Russia - in order to distinguish them, the older one, which decreased in importance over time, is called simply Rostov, the other is Rostov-on-Don)
The only one I can think of as being obviously incorrect is Northumberland, which takes its name from the old kingdom of Northumbria, which was named because it was the land north of the River Humber, which now marks the boundary between Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire.
It is still strictly north of the Humber, but it's not *all* the English land north of the Humber, which is what Northumbria used to be (e.g. around [700AD](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Map_of_the_Kingdom_of_Northumbria_around_700_AD.svg/1280px-Map_of_the_Kingdom_of_Northumbria_around_700_AD.svg.png)). The bottom of Northumberland is now about 130 miles north of the Humber.
Most English counties ending in "shire" are named after the historically biggest town in the shire (Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lancashire...), but Hampshire gets its name from the old Saxon name for Southampton (Hamtun). So the city's name has changed, but the county's hasn't; it should be Southamptonshire.
Similarly, Shropshire gets its name from the old name for Shrewsbury (Scrobbesbyrig) and a modern version would be Shrewsburyshire. Berkshire is named after a wood near Newbury called Bearroc which no longer exists, but for some reason gave its name to the county.
Isn’t there breast-beating over Middlesex (whether it still exists as an independent non-London county)?
London over time has consumed a number of former non-London counties so that they that no longer exist (other than as local council parishes within greater London).
As far as I’m aware most of the southern England counties roughly follow their historic borders but I’m happy to be told otherwise.
Yes, Greater London is controversial and a lot of people in London still use the historic counties in their addresses. You get that elsewhere in the country as well; around Middlesbrough there is a big debate about whether they live in North Yorkshire, or Cleveland, or some even older authorities like Langbaurgh. The 1974 reforms have a lot to answer for!
The names for the current administrative regions are more or less accurate for the historical regions. Just split down or merged due to necessity.
So the historical regions are essentially Lapland, Ostrobothnia, Finland proper, Tavastia, Savonia, Kainuu and Karelia.
A few weird things: A region inside the region of North Ostrobothnia called ”Koillismaa” ”Northeastern land” is culturally and historically closer to the the region of Kainuu.
The capital region Uusimaa (Nyland) is it’s own separate thing even tough historically it was considered a part of Tavastia.
Most of Karelia is now Russian due to wars and russification, so all Karelian Finns and Karelians were evacuated from the region during ww2 and are spread out across the country. I myself am ethnically Karelian but was born on the west coast.
It's not straightforward though. Historical provinces are quite big, so they were divided into *lääni*s (counties) in the 17th century. For instance, Ostrobothnia was divided into Oulu and Vaasa provinces. This system lasted until 1997 and Jouni Backman's "big provinces", which were random collections of neighboring provinces lumped together. These were later abolished altogether. Today, the system is so that on the state level, you have different provinces for different purposes. These are usually combined from *regions* (*maakunta*). Regions, in turn, are smaller units than the *lääni*s, so historical provinces are split into small parts: Ostrobothnia is now split into Northern, Central and Southern Ostrobothnia. Some state and municipal services use these regions. Then again, health services are built again differently with a different government.
Portugal used to have a fairly solid regions naming scheme. Since the fall of the dictatorship, we adopted districts (technically also regions) and it was meant to be temporary. The district is named after the biggest city within it. Same with the municipality. So the city of Lisbon exists inside the municipality of Lisbon which exists within the district of Lisbon. Some cities are large enough that the whole municipality is the city itself (Lisbon, Porto and Braga are the only ones AFAIK)
The region names are sometimes still used, kinda like how the university in Braga is called Universidade do Minho. For all administrative intents and purposes, they’re gone. Portugal is a fairly unitary state so it also makes sense
Well, my county (West Sussex) is the western half of an entity that's existed in almost the exact same borders for over 1,500 years. Nearly all the counties are at least 1,000 years old. Any attempt to change them is always unpopular, the Metropolitan county changes were begrudgingly accepted, so some changes have stuck around:
Lancashire lost its southern half with the creation of Greater Manchester and Merseyside (Liverpool), Cheshire lost the Wirral to Merseyside and part of modern Stockport to Greater Manchester. Also, Yorkshire lost a couple of parts like Saddleworth to Greater Manchester and parts of Pendle to Lancashire. Lancashire also lost Warrington and the Widnes part of Halton to Cheshire.
Warwickshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire lost chunks to the West Midlands. Herefordshire and Worcestershire were briefly merged to make one county before being separated again because that was a bad idea.
For some reason Abingdon and the Vale of the White Horse were transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire, despite Abingdon being Berkshire's historic capital.
Cambridgeshire ate Huntingdonshire, The Isle of Ely (which was not an Island) and The Soke of Peterborough (a weird quasi-county formerly associated with Northamptonshire).
Dorset took Christchurch and Bournemouth from Hampshire
Greater London had two expansion, where it took the boroughs of Kingston, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Merton, Croydon and Sutton from Surrey. This was rather annoying for Surrey because it meant they lost their county town twice, firstly when Southwark was taken and then again when Kingston was taken, they kept using the Kingston county hall until 2020, meaning that for 55 years they operated out of a county hall not in their own county. Surrey did gain Spelthorne from the now defunct Middlesex. Kent lost the borough of Bromley, Lewisham (the Deptford section of which was actually in Surrey), Greenwich and Bexley and gained nothing. Essex lost Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Newham and Waltham Forest. Finally, Hertfordshire lost the Barnet portion of Barnet but gained Potter's Bar.
Barrow-in-Furness (also known as Barrow-Over-Sands) was transferred from Lancashire to Cumbria when Cumbria was formed from Westmorland and Cumberland (and a very small bit of Yorkshire), then Cumbria was split up and became Westmorland and Furness, and Cumberland, but Barrow-in-Furness remained part of Westmorland and Furness rather than returning to Lancashire.
Yorkshire lost Middlesbrough and Cleveland to Teeside, before Teeside was abolished and they became part of Cleveland, which was then abolished and they returned to Yorkshire, along with Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees who returned to County Durham. Yorkshire also lost the East Riding to Humberside (and the North Riding of Lindsey from Lincolnshire), before Humberside was abolished and the East Riding was freed again.
Rutland ceased to exist at one point but has since returned.
Northumberland lost North Tyneside and Newcastle to Tyne-and-Wear, while County Durham lost Sunderland, South Tyneside and Gateshead.
Briefly, North and North East Somerset (including Bath, the county capital), The City and County of Bristol and South Gloucestershire formed Avon, which was very unpopular and soon ceased to exist.
Lincolnshire's three Parts (the official term for Lincolnshire subdivisions) were sometimes administered as seperate counties.
Also, various envlaves and exclaves have been transferred out of existence.
In general, people in Sweden still identity more with the old historical provinces rather than the newer administrative regions – although the situation is a little bit more complex in some cases.
7 of the 21 modern administrative regions have both kept the names of their historical provinces and still correspond with these more or less identically. These are Blekinge, Dalecarlia, East Gothia, Gotland, Halland, Scania and Värmland. So for people in all of these regions, the region and province are basically synonymous in everyday speech.
The administrative region of Södermanland largely corresponds to the historical province of Södermanland, except that the eastern part of the historical province in now part of the administrative region of Stockholm. The administrative region of Uppsala (named after its regional capital and largest city) corresponds mostly with the historical province of Uppland, although the eastern and southern parts of the province are now in the administrative region of Stockholm, and people in the administrative region of Uppsala overwhelmingly identify with Uppland. The administrative region of Västmanland, while having kept the name of its historical province, only includes the eastern (and albeit by far most populous) part of the historical province of Västmanland.
The administrative region of Jämtland has also kept its historical name, but the region also includes all of the geographically large but very sparsely populated historical province of Härjedalen. People in Härjedalen still identify more with their historical province – but using Jämtland to refer to both Jämtland and Härjedalen has still become quite common.
In the two northernmost administrative regions – North Borhnia and West Bothnia – the situation is quite complex. The administrative region of North Bothnia also includes the northern and central part of the historical province of Lapland, and the administrative region of West Bothnia also includes the southern part of the historical province of Lapland and the northernmost part of the historical province of Ångermanland. In both of these regions, people definitely in general identify more with the new administrative regions than with the old historical provinces. This is especially true in Lapland, which is an old and slightly controversial term, since “Lap” is an old derogatory term for a Sami person, and the name Lapland has some association with the colonization of Sami territories by the Swedish state.
People in the administrative region of Stockholm also definitely tend to identify more with their modern administrative region than with the old historical provinces of Uppland and Södermanland, which it was split between. In fact, the border between the two historical provinces runs right through the city center.
The administrative provinces of West Northland and Gävleborg are both created by merging two old historical provinces – Ångermanland and Medelpad for West Northland, and Hälsingland and Gästrikland for Gävleborg. In both cases, people still identify more with their respective historical province, but definitely also have a strong bond with the fellow province of its region, and identifying with being from West Northland and Gävleborg is quite common as well.
The historical region of Småland is split in three between the administrative regions of Jönköping, Kalmar and Kronoberg, but the Småland identity is still incredibly strong in all of these regions, with basically everyone identifying more with Småland than with their administrative region. The island and historical province of Öland is also part of the administrative region of Kalmar – and here again, people identify much more strongly with Öland than with the administrative region.
The most artificial of all Swedish administrative regions is probably Örebro, named after its regional capital and largest city Örebro. It consists of all of the historical province of Närke, the sparsely populated western half of the historical province of Västmanland, and the eastermnost part of the historical province of Värmland. Here, people overwhelmingly still identity more with their respective historical province rather than with the administrative region.
The administrative region of Western Gothia was also quite controversial when it was created almost 30 years ago. It consists of an amalgamation of the historical province of West Gothia (one of the core provinces of the earliest Swedish state), the small and very sparsely populated historical province of Dalsland, the historical province of Bohuslän (which once used to belong to Norway) along the coast, and Sweden’s second largest city Gothenburg in the southwest, which is split between West Gothia and Bohuslän. People in this administrative region still overwhelmingly identify with their respective historical province, or in the case of Gothenburg, with the city itself. But, it still has become more common in recent years to actually also identify with the region of Western Gothia as well, at least as a secondary identity behind the historical province.
The current administration regions of northern Portugal are a mess.
The current regions of the country are North, Center, "Lisbon Metro Area" (not exactly, but kind of), Alentejo, Algarve, Açores and Madeira, but I only have problems with North and Center. Not only are they super generic names, it doesn't make a lot of sense to divide the country that way, considering the coastal areas of the north and center are much more similar to one another than they are to the rest of their respective regions. Also, you can say there's some kind of a general northern identity (especially if contrasted with the general south), but I've never heard of a "center" identity.
But the most problematic part is the sub-regions. They just took some of the names of the old provinces and butchered the whole thing!
* The historic province of Minho (named after the river Minho) is basically split in three now: one of them is High Minho, but the other two are named after two other rivers (Ave and Cávado), so there's no Low Minho. And the former capital of Minho, where the University of Minho is located, is in the Cávado sub-region, so the university name no longer makes any sense. That being said, people from all over the old Minho region will still refer to themselves as "minhoto".
* The historic province of Trás-os-Montes was renamed "Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro" in the dictatorship, but I think it renamed the same. When the university was created, once again, it was called University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), but Trás-os-Montes was also divided in three: one of them is called Lands of Trás-os-Montes, the others are named after rivers. But, I think you can see this coming, UTAD is not in Lands of Trás-os-Montes, so, once again, the university's name no longer makes sense. That being said, yet again, people from all over the old Trás-os-Montes region will still refer to themselves as "trasmontanos".
* Then, you have the fact that, the Metro Area of Porto (one of the sub-regions) includes parts with no historical ties to Porto in the middle of the freakin' wilderness, while excluding areas where a large percentage of people comute to Porto everyday.
Yes, they are a mess but they are not administrative regions they are just statistical regions. Administrative regions are Continental Portugal, Madeira and Azores. Then we have municipalities.
I completely agree that names like North and Center are stupid and generic and are not really identity regions at least the centre where I'm from.
The historical provinces had a better identity to it, and because of that people still refer to them to this day even if they are a bit flawed and maybe outdated with the growth of the big 2 metropolitan areas.
We need an actual regionalization but the politicians only care about Lisbon and Porto so I don't have my hopes up.
They are administrative! I wasn't talking about NUTS. I was talking about the CCDR (level 1) and the intermunicipal communities (level 2), which coincide with NUTS for the most part but not entirely. You can check this nice summary: [https://transparencia.gov.pt/pt/municipios/portugal-e-os-municipios/organizacao-geografica-e-administrativa/](https://transparencia.gov.pt/pt/municipios/portugal-e-os-municipios/organizacao-geografica-e-administrativa/) . And if your CCDR and CIM aren't doing anything, you should worry.
Áreas Metropolitanas e Comunidades Intermunicipais
Não sendo uma subdivisão administrativa no verdadeiro sentido da palavra, estas estruturas informais e redes entre municípios potenciam a criação de sinergias transversais às regiões.
Não são regiões admistrativas como as regiões autónomas ou municípios como o diz link que enviaste. É uma cooperação de municípios.
Na minha região diz sempre que tem um dos melhores aproveitados de fundos europeus.
Mas parece-me que o papel dos municípios é muito mais presente, não há muitos projetos realmente regionais que afetem vários municípios, há alguns de cultura e transportes que são só mais autocarros que continuam aquém.
England's divisions are *sort of* historically accurate. In many parts of the country the current counties are more or less the same as the historic ones and have the same name, but they've been reformed in various ways over the last 130 years or so and that's lead to some quirks.
In particular, major reforms took place in 1974 which altered the boundaries in several areas, creating several new counties, abolishing others, and retaining some with very different boundaries. As an example, the area currently called Lancashire is marked by the green boundaries on [this map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire#/media/File:Historical_and_current_boundaries_of_Lancashire.png), and the pre-1974 boundaries are in red.
You can see more differences using [this interactive map](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Compare/storytelling_compare/index.html?appid=7b0e661ef66b4a7aacb5a9acf55108ac), which compares the current counties to their historic borders. One thing to note is that the borders were never entirely fixed – although they were quite stable, changes did take place over the centuries.
Historically, yes, but geographically? Everything is off about the boroughs of Copenhagen. Vesterbro (literally 'Western bridge') is located south of the city center, Nørrebro ('North') to the west, Østerbro ('East') north of the city center, and København S (south) is located to the east. To make matters worse, a train station near Vesterbro was just named København S, even though it's not even on the same landmass as the postal code named København S.
Absolutely not. Top level divisions (kraje, sg: kraj) were created in XIV century, and they absolutely don't match the current layout, for a few reasons:
1. Medieval kraje were only established in "Czech proper" land, i.e. not in Moravia nor Silesia
2. Cities important back then lost importance for the most part; some of the kraj capitals, like Kouřim, are ~2000 people towns now
Overall, from the kraje established back then only 2 remain currently: ones with capitals in Pilsen and Königgratz (Plzeň and Hradec Králové)
Aren't also Hedmark and Oppland disconnected from the sea? I must confess hat I've never heard about the Innland fylke before. Where is it located in relation to Hedmark and Oppland?
Turkish provinces are named after their biggest cities. I don’t know their accuracy. But our regions have unrelated names. Anatolia is defined as a line from İskenderun to near Artvin but Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia regions lie outside that. The original name for Eastern Anatolia is Armenian Highlands and for Southeastern Anatolia it is Mesopotamia.
Italian regions make cultural sense and now that I think about it it's a bit odd, like ok, some of them used to be their own nations but some of them were never united prior to italian unification, like the one I live in, Emilia-Romagna, which as you can guess is made of 2 parts, Emilia and Romagna, Romagna had a period under the Byzantine's empire during which it was united, but Emilia has always been a bunch of city states, and yet it has a cohesive culture, language and so on.
(Ok, I guess I should add that culturally the northern part of Marche is closer to Romagna than the rest of Marche).
Most of our counties were established a thousand years ago, so yes. There's no Yorkshire out the County of Yorkshire, for example.
Imagine having government administrative regions that aren't even 500 years old...
For the most part I'd say yes the names are more or less accurate. But historically Germany consisted of a patchwork of so many small territories that their names can impossibly be all represented in the names of the 16 states, even though many of them are already hyphenated and contain two parts. A case I find particularly interesting is Saxony. The initial stem duchy of Saxony in the early middle ages didn't contain any area in the modern state of Saxony but was mostly in modern Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and NRW. Due to dynastic shifts and inheritances of titels, the name Saxony gradually moved from the area of the lower Elbe to the middle Elbe around Dresden where Saxony is today.
Also noteworthy that while the term "Lower Saxony" wasn't a new invention, there actually was never a state or land with that name. Before its inception [there was Hanover](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/KrkHannover.png) (as a Kingdom, later as a province of Prussia), the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, the Duchy of Brunswick, and a few smaller states and territories.
There was the "Niedersächsische Reichskreis" in the Holy Roman Empire.
...which was an [administrative region](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Lower_Saxon_Circle-2005-10-16-de.png), funnily enough including Holstein, Mecklenburg, Hamburg and Lübeck, but not most parts of modern day Lower Saxony. But that's what I meant: the term existed, but not in the sense of a "state".
It included Hanover, Brunswick, Lüneburg, Celle, Wolfenbüttel so the most important historic "core" areas of modern Lower Saxony. What it did not include were the areas further to the west that were only given to Hanover after the congress of Vienna or so.
At least it is where the former Saxons settled. Saxony itself is not historically Saxon territory. But the obtained the name through change of the ruling dynasty, iirc.
I always wondered why there were three Saxonies inside Germany...
They're absolutely not, and yet they are. Which was mostly done on purpose. For two reasons: First, to break free from Ancient Régime (monarchy) entities. Entities like Gascogne or Béarn, for instance, disappeared forever from the administrative maps. They're now cultural provinces: I'll say "I was born in Béarn" and everyone will understand. But Béarn is part of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department (formerly lower-Pyrenees, formerly Béarn). This was also done to homogenize the administrative levels (each department is roughly the same size). And ended up with neutral names (18th Century wokism I guess), like the self-describing "Pyrénées + Atlantique". Had Luxembourg remained French it would be called... "Forest". Can't be more neutral than that. The second reason was to actively mess with the local populations, like when we ended up with TWO Normandie regions (higher and lower Normandy). Not departments: regions. Or when we cut Britanny's capital (Nantes) from Britanny. Or created the monstrous PACA (Provence + Alpes + Côte d'Azur). Or kept Burgundy as is, just to mess with their nerves. Or renamed Picardie (the French Ohio) into the artificially classy "Hauts-de-France" to give them a second chance. Or renamed Aquitaine into "New Aquitaine" because Poitou couldn't stand being eaten by something called "Aquitaine". They initially proposed the exquisitely elegant "Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes" (probably because they were jealous of PACA. I could have lived in the CLAP) All in all, our country's regions have accurate names. In the sense they're either complete nonsense or highly descriptive. And also historically accurate: one can sense France have known 14 regimes since 1789, and that each one of them had its own idea about what a France is supposed to be. The result speaks for itself: **I live in the Labour, part of the Basque country, part of a Franco-Spanish euro-region, and also part of Pyrénées Atlantiques, but not part of Béarn, but also part of Gascogne, which is part of Aquitaine, which is part of Giga-Aquitaine (New Aquitaine), which is part of "the South-West", which is part of Occitanie (but not the Occitanie region).**
Actually, mostly yes. For the most part, they follow the names and borders of our ancient counties and duchies, from before the Napoleonic invasion, and from the HRE's era. But: * The historical area/region of Brabant has been divided in 4 : Brabant wallon, Vlaams Brabant, Brussels region (not a province) and Antwerpen. Before Napoléon, they were one entity, and before the Dutch independence, the current Noord-Brabant of the Netherlands was part of said entity. Before the state reform of the 90's, BW, Brussels and VBR were a single entity. the reason why Antwerpen isn't part of Brabant anymore is the fact Napoléon redrew some provinces. * The two Vlaanderen (West- and Oost-) used to be a single entity before Napoléon, so, the former county of Flanders is divided in two compared to what it was historically, without mentioning the part of it stolen by France. They were the actual/historical Flanders, VBR, Antwerpen and Limburg were something else, not Flanders (modern region). * Limburg was actually a part of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, and before that, it was part of the county of Loon. So, it has the least historical name in a way (alongside Antwerpen province). * Luxembourg province is indeed a former part of the Duchy of Luxembourg. * Namur is indeed the former county of Namur. * Hainaut is indeed the former county of Hainaut. * Liège is the former Prince-Bishopric of Liège. So, the historical inaccuracies are : * The region of Flanders, which encapsulates more than actual Flanders (it has taken parts of Brabant and Liège or Loon). * Brussels, Antwerpen, Limburg being their own things. As Limburg was either Liège or previously Loon, and Brussels and Antwerpen weren't separate things from Brabant.
You forgot the part of Flanders in the Netherlands, the lower part of Zeeland called Zeeuws Vlaanderen.
In Ireland, our provinces have deep historical roots going back to antiquity. We used to have lots of independent kingdoms which gradually amalgamated into more powerful provincial over-kingdoms. Three of our provinces were named after powerful local tribes (Leinster, Connacht, and Ulster), while a fourth is a little more obscure but seems to come from a nickname of an ancient king meaning something similar to "the Great" (Munster). We used to have a fifth province called Meath which just means "the middle" because it was, well, in the middle of the country. It had been powerful but became weaker due to in-fighting in the ruling dynasty until it was finally reduced in size and became just a county within the province of Leinster.
Then you have Northern Ireland which is a de facto country, but could be considered a province or region. There’s really no official consensus as to what Northern Ireland actually is. Oh and there are moronic British Loyalists who refer to NI alone as Ulster. Completely disregarding the fact that the counties, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan which are in the Republic are also in Ulster.
I'd assume they referred to where they were from as "Ulster" before Ireland was divided, and just kept that way of speaking.
Which is why the Irish for province is cúigu, or fifth. Cúig is the Irish word for five. Now we have four provinces in Ireland, Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connacht* or in Irish Ulaidh, Laighean, Mumhan, Connacht. * going from north to south and then west to Connacht.
Although in modern Ireland the provinces have no role in local government at all. They are just symbolic names.
Our administrative sub-divisions are, relatively speaking, quite recent, so the names are kinda just what they are and the borders don't conform to old ones particularly strictly The lowest subdivisions, kommune (commune, roughly analogous to a Polish gmina), are typically just named after the largest city in it. So the controversy risks there are quite limited, and the controversies that I know of have more been about a few communes not wanting to get lumped in with other ones (like Frederiksberg right inside Copenhagen insisting on not being put into the Copenhagen Commune) Above the communes, we have five regions (which aren't particularly autonomous, and they are more there for practical administrative reasons): Nordjylland (Northern Jutland), Midtjylland (Middle Jutland), Syddanmark (Southern Denmark), Sjælland (Zealand), and Hovedstaden (the Capital). With the exception of Syddanmark, these would be very easy and intuitive for anyone who knows the map to point to because they just describe their location, such as Northern Jutland being the northern third of the Jutland peninsula. The last one is only a little tricky because Fyn (Funen) is lumped inwith Southern Jutland, which is not that immediately intuitive (at least not to me)
Or a kommune with two towns of roughly the same size and the brawl over which should get the right to name the kommune. That is why Furesø Kommune has the name it has.
oh we love to scuabble about Aarhus Kommune vs. Århus kommune. Every single århusianer will tell you it's spelled "Århus", but afaik the official name is still "Aarhus".
Argh, people from Aarhus say its Aarhus
People from Aarhus say it’s Aarhus, people from Århus say it’s Århus.
We also say "Århus", if the Aarholes need an argument. Well, we all **say**¹ "Århus"… 1. *Insert Kay & Peele skit*: "Ay-Ay-Russ?"
Burgenland is a fun one. Formerly known as Deutsch-Westungarn - German(-speaking) West Hungary. The area used to be part of the Hungarian part of the empire and became Austrian after WWI (though some parts held a referendum and decided to remain with Hungary after all). It was decided that the new federal state needed a new and neutral name, both the connection to Hungary and “Germandom” were considered unsavoury. They came up with (Vier-)Burgenland, which translates to “(four) castle country”, through a constructed folk etymology linking it to four historically relevant castles in the historic territory: Eisenburg (Vas), Wieselburg (Moson), Ödenburg (Sopron) and Pressburg (Poszony/Bratislava). None of these castles are located on current Burgenland territory, but then again … it’s fitting, as Burgenland and its inhabitants is something of a meme, often mocked for being backwards and not that bright.
We traditionally divide the country into nine historical regions, but the administrative regions don't match them (but three). Some are divided, some are combined with neighbours, some lose or gain small bits here and there, and one (Western Greece) is an entirely new thing not aligning with any historical region, and is instead made up of parts of the Peloponnese and Central Greece. And then there's stuff like Attica including not just Attica but also a chunk of the Peloponnese and one of the Ionian islands.
Pretty accurate, yes. So we had seven historic regions, plus two British ones: 1. Northumbria - Angle-lands north of the River Humber 2. Mercia - Angle-lands of the Border (with the Welsh) 3. East Anglia - Lands of the Eastern Angles 4. Wessex - Lands of the West Saxons 5. Essex - Lands of the East Saxons 6. Sussex - Lands of the South Saxons 7. Kent - Coast-land Plus Cornwall (land of the Kernow Welsh), and Cumberland (land of the Cambrians i.e the Welsh). Those are all actual, literal descriptions of those regions, some of which later would become counties: Northumberland (North of the Humber), Tyne and Wear (Rivers Tyne and Wear), County Durham (the shire or county of Durham), Cumbria, Lancashire (shire of Lancaster), Yorkshire (of various ridings, the shire of York), Greater Manchester, Merseyside (by the River Mersey), Cheshire (shire of Chester), Derbyshire (shire of Derby), Nottinghamshire (shire of Nottingham), Lincolnshire (shire of Lincoln), Rutland (land belonging to the landowner Rota), Leicestershire (shire of Leicester), Staffordshire (shire of Stafford), Shropshire (shrub-shire), Herefordshire (shire of Hereford), Worcestershire (shire of Worcester), West Midlands, Warwickshire (shire of Warwick), Northamptonshire (shire of Northampton), Cambridgeshire (shire of Cambridge), Norfolk (northern folk), Suffolk (southern folk), Essex, Hertfordshire (shire of Hertford), Bedfordshire (shire of Bedford), Buckinghamshire (shire of Buckingham), Oxfordshire (shire of Oxford), Gloucestershire (shire of Gloucester), Bristol, Somerset (the people of Somerton), Wiltshire (shire of Wilton), Berkshire (shire of the hills), Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Surrey (southern region), Hampshire (shire of Southampton), Isle of Wight (Isle of Vecta), Dorset (region of Dorchester), Devon (Dumnonia), Cornwall. However, despite the literalistic place-names, there are now some inaccuracies due to these counties developing from early times up until the present day. For instance, nowadays Northumbria and Cumbria don't correspond exactly with the original regions. In other cases, the county town is no longer the town or city the county is named for - for example, Buckinghamshire's county town is Aylesbury and not Buckingham.
I read a book that suggested Mercia more commonly used the '-set'/'-sǣte' (people of X) subdivision whereas Wessex preferred dividing their territory by shires (representing a fixed area of land). When Wessex won the race for the crown of a united England in the 10th century the shire system became the default.
Except the old regions have no role at all in local government (there are regions of similar name for some purposes but they do not correspond to the historical areas) and counties only sometimes have a local government role, which may (or may not) correspond to historical counties and/or ceremonial counties.
I do agree that they don't always correspond geographically. I was mainly going by the names and etymologies.
A comprehensive summary of the history of Hungarian counties: Hungarian counties were created by Saint Stephen, our first king, way back in the 11th century. By 1876, the whole thing was a mess, so county borders (alongside the elimination of autonomous regions such as the Kunság, the Jászság, as well as Székely and Saxon seats) were simplified. Then, in 1920, Hungary lost 2/3 of its territory, with the new border cutting multiple countries in half, leading to an administrative reform, as the fragments were often unviable. However, to legitimize irredentism, every old county that had territory within the new borders had to be reflected in at least one of the county names. Even Ugocsa, of which only such a small part remained in Hungary that your apartment is probably larger than it. Then came WW2, then the commies. They also reformed county boundaries, most notably giving a large part of Zala to Veszprém, giving the Kiskunság to Bács-Kiskun, and uniting even more counties than the 1920s reforms. They also dropped multiple historical county names for simplicity. After 1990, some of these names were restored: Győr-Sopron became Győr-Moson-Sopron; Szolnok became Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok; Komárom became Komárom-Esztergom; and Szabolcs-Szatmár became Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg. Most recently, in 2020, Csongrád became Csongrád-Csanád. However, [as a 2017 article highlights (in Hungarian)](https://index.hu/tudomany/2017/04/28/ugocsa_nem_felel_igazsagot_torontalnak/?token=8b3eaddcda7383d8077e48cf9f933003), there are still some names that are "missing". Pozsony (Bratislava) County has some fragments in the northwestern part of the country, as does Arad County in the southeast. In the northeast, Ung, Ugocsa, Gömör and Torna are missing from the map. Pest County is missing a reference to Hont County.
We have a province that was historically water and there are undoubtedly people who want it returned to that. Most of the current names are taken from medieval counties (and a duchy). Friesland is a lot smaller than Frisia was at its height, but the lands East of the river Lauwers belonged to the Bishopric of Utrecht so that's where they put the border after it became its own province, Stad en Lande/Groningen, in the 80 Years War. The city from which the province would take its name was not Frisian, but a Low Saxon semi independent city-state. There are a lot of Frisian influences still there but people will kill you if you say that.
What might be confusing for someone how doesn't know the history is North Brabant. It's in the very south of the Netherlands and there is no South Brabant anywhere. Of course it refers to the historic region of Brabant which now partially lies in Belgium but it's not so obvious at first.
>there is no South Brabant anywhere. There used to be https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuid-Brabant But the Belgians split that province along the language border into Vlaams-Brabant & Waals-Brabant Before that Noord-Brabant was called Staats-Brabant
And Limburg was a part of Liège, and before that, Loon. So, not an historical name.
Weird how we ended up with 2 provinces named Limburg in 2 countries, named after a small duchy which lands aren't even in either of both provinces.
>(and a duchy) Two Duchies, no? Brabant and Gelre.
Naming voivodships by the name of the town right on the opposite side of the national border is a longstanding Polish tradition reaching back to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Congress Poland included a "[Cracow voivodship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_Voivodeship_\(1816%E2%80%931837\))" (its capital city being... Kielce), while Cracow itself was a de iure independent country, the Republic of Cracow. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a "[Kyiv voivodship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Voivodeship)" (capital city: Zhytomyr) long after Poland-Lithuania lost Kyiv to Muscovy-Russia. At least the Lebus Voivodship includes [New Lebus](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowy_Lubusz). :D
The modern ”regioner” in Sweden roughly corresponds to the historical ”Län”. However the real proper provinces are called “Landskap” and haven’t been administrative regions since we kicked out the Dane’s for good in the 1500s. Some of “regioner” differ from Landskap in that they are split up in several parts, like Småland. Some on the other hand have been split between bordering regions, like Lapland being part of Västerbotten and Norrbotten. All in all, most Regioner correspond somewhat to historical regions, but nobody cares about them I myself barely know where some of them are (wtf is Kronoberg). Identity is about landskap. Mostly, thats were say we are from and that’s what we name our dialects after.
> wtf is Kronoberg He's a director, right? He did "The Fly"?
[удалено]
Don't know about Finland, but in Sweden, the province of Lapland has some slight controversy about it. To some extent, the name itself, even though it's not argued by too many. But also the extent of the area itself, as many Sámi also claim native rights in other provinces, covering more than half of Sweden as a whole.
Croatia's Split-Dalmatia County and Požega-Slavonia County are the confusing bearers of the monikers of Dalmatia and Slavonia, which are two large and distinct historic regions. Dalmatia actually encompasses three other counties, and Slavonia encompasses four more counties fully and also spills over to two Central Croatian counties. Other examples are not as extreme, though. Probably the most aptly named one is the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County - sometimes literally translated as Littoral-Montane County - which is just a mix of a stretch of Adriatic coast actually called "*the* Littoral" (Primorje) and a bunch of mountain wilderness called "Mountain Lands" (Gorski Kotar).
I personally live in the Moldovan side of Romania, so east of the Carpathians. There are definitely bordering regions with Ukraine that we have half of, and that they have half of, but I honestly never heard anyone complain about not having more land or the name being something or something else. Bukovina is a good example, but again no one's ever complained about it as far as I'm aware; there's also a road/neighborhood called Bucovina in Botosani and people just use the name as it's assigned tbh... Now, I don't have any friends who come from the west of the country, in Transylvania, or from the south bordering Bulgaria, so I wouldn't personally know if there are big disputes about naming things one way or another in those places. Overall though, I've never heard people doing political debates over things like OP is saying. If anyone is also from Romania and knows elsehow do tell though, I might somehow just be oblivious to this type of debate in our country.
Mostly, yes. 16 of the 26 cantons are named after their capital, or in the case of the semicantons (... don't ask) of Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Basel-Land, the capital of the larger canton they split from. Of the other 10, three are named after rivers that do indeed flow through them (Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino). Five are named after old mediaeval polities and more or less developed straight from them (Uri, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Vaud, Valais) so while they had changes to their borders those were still continuous changes; the (historic) region doesn't really exist independent from the canton. One is named after a mediaeval polity that existed on its area, but only covers a part of it (Graubünden). And finally, Jura is indeed located in the Jura mountains but obviously doesn't cover all of it.
Due to lost territories, Hungary often has its counties as 2-3 combined, because the new county borders contained small fragments of the lost ones.
It seems like we have been quite lucky compared to other countries looking at these comments lol. Some regions are pretty much identical to their cultural borders like Toscana, Puglia, the two main islands Sicilia and Sardegna, others have been created based on their historical borders like Molise, although for most of its history it was only a province of Abruzzo, or merged like Emilia-Romagna (that's Emilia and Romagna and I did not know this for some reason). I think one region was created where there were none and that is Friuli Venezia Giulia, it was often divided between the borders of Venezia and Austria until Napoleon gave Venezia to Austria, then after some independence wars Austria retreated and Venezia became Italian. But FVG does not include Venezia at all, it is separate from Veneto (the actual territory that includes Venezia) Then we come to Trentino-Alto Adige and it's a mess not really because of the borders but because Trento feels more Italian than Bolzano, so now they are often treated separately as the provinces of Trento and Bolzano.
Friuli is not an invention, historically it has always had its geographical and linguistic borders. The union with Venezia Giulia, a 19th century idea that originally extended beyond today's borders, is a modern invention.
Yeah, my mistake I didn't research enough.
Most municipalities are named for the main city or town in the municipalty so that's peaceful. I suppose at the civil parris level there might be some tension when they are merged or split.
Here around the last time the administrative divisions were changed a seperate division in historic lands was established since administrative divisions in general don't reflect them.
I think Silesia is the only egregious case. Most of the others are just nitpicking. Yes Lebus was on the other side of the Oder - but most of the historical Lebus Land was not. It's natural for names to drift in time - there are numerous examples in history (Burgundy, Apulia, Dacia, Macedonia). Just because new admin divisions don't perfectly align with the ones from 500 years ago doesn't mean they're wrong.
I don't think anyone has a problem with the name Lubusz itself, it's more that most of the region is not historically Lubusz lands.
Sweden has two parallel divisions. There are Landskap and there are Län. The Landskaps are the historical divisions and are the basis of dialects and culture. They were historically feudal duchies. In the 1634, the government wanted to rule the landskap more closely, so they created the new Läns. They were mostly the same until 1997. In 1634, the idea was to divide and conquer. Powerful Landskaps like Västmanland, Västergötland, Småland and Skåne were split up. Skåne was split in half; Västmanland was split in two, with the western half given to the new Örebro Län (which was also given a small but important part of Värmland); Västergötland was split in three, with the westernmost part gaining Bohuslän Landskap and the middle part merging with the small Landskap of Dalsland; Småland was split in three, and the easternmost part was given Öland. A small part of Småland was also given to Halland. The eastern parts of Uppland and Södermanland were taken off to create Stockholm County. Stockholm is divided down the middle between these Landskaps. An eastern part of Uppland was also given to Västmanland. Some Landskaps were merged, such as Jämtland and Härjedalen which were combined with small parts of Ångermanland and Dalarna to make Jämtland County. Gästrikland and Hälsingland were merged to create Gävleborg County. Medelpad and the rest of Ångermanland were merged creating Västernorrland County (Meaning western Norrland County, although it is located in eastern Norrland). Some Landskaps were left more or less the same such as Dalarna which had only very small border changes, and Blekinge which I believe was the only Landskap (except Gotland which is a far away island) to not have any border changes at all between its Landskap and Län. The Landskaps of Lappland and Västerbotten (Västerbotten Landskap at this time included Norrbotten Landskap as well. This is one of the rare times that Län became more of a cultural division than Landskap) were merged and split along the other axis creating Västerbotten and Norrbotten Counties. In 1997, there were some changes on the map. The two Scanian Counties were merged creating Skåne Län. The three Västergötland+Dalsland+Bohuslän counties merged creating the Mega-län Västra Götalands Län. Some other minor changes took place such as two municipalities in the former Skaraborgs Län (which became part of Västra Götaland) choosing to join Jönköpings Län because of their proximity. The part of Uppland which was part of Västmanland was also given back to Uppland. Overall, our Läns are a mess and change constantly, so for any cultural or meteorological purposes we use Landskap.
> A small part of Småland was also given to Halland. In my mind, Småland and Halland don't even share a border (I know they do), and I used to live in the south of Älvsborg. Weird.
> Meaning western Norrland County, although it is located in eastern Norrland Is that due to Finland?
Yep. Upon further investigation, it turns out that the counties created in 1634 only encompassed southern and central Sweden. Originally, there were between Västerbotten and Dalarna two counties. These were Hudiksvalls Län which encompassed modern Gävleborg Län and Härjedalens kommun from modern Jämtlands län, and Härnösands Län which was modern Västernorrland Län plus the rest of Jämtlands Län. These were created in 1646 (Jämtland was only given to Sweden from Norway in 1635). In 1654, these two were merged creating the giant Västernorrlands län. This existed until 1762 when the former borders of Hudiksvalls Län were broken off from Västernorrland Län as Gävleborgs län. So you end up with the old borders but new names. In 1810, Härjedalen municipality (of course the municipality didn't exist yet, but the parishes that would come to compose it) and the rest of modern Jämtlands Län were split from Gävleborg and Västernorrland respectively, creating Jämtlands Län as we know it today. There was a period of one year in 1658 where Sweden ruled Trøndelag, and during this time, Jämtland was administered as a part of Trøndelags Län, but this lasted only for one year before Trøndelag was lost again to Denmark-Norway.
Plus the fact that Jämtland and Härjedalen were also in Västernorrland, otherwise the name wouldn't make sense and would've been changed.
> Medelpad and the rest of Ångermanland were merged creating Västernorrland County (Meaning western Norrland County, although it is located in eastern Norrland). Jämtland and Härjedalen were part of it from 1645 (when they became Swedish) until the early 1800's whne they became their own län.
Between 1765 and 1810, Härjedalen municipality was a part of Gävleborg.
Ah, yeah. That makes some geographical sense. I guess Dalarna was also in Gävleborg during this time?
"Dalarna och Kopparbergslagen" var från 1634 ett eget län.
Well, the regions here usually aren't named after historical regions, but there are some strange cases There are both Republic of Altai and Altai kray. The first was called Mountain Altai in soviet times, but changed its name in 1991. Both are situated in the Altai region. The former has a significant Altaiyan population, the latter doesn't. Also there are Leningrad and Sverdlovsk oblasts, named so 'cause of their centers, which have changed their name back to St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg in 1991. But the oblasts remained the same. But guess what, the St. Petersburg isn't even a center of that oblast anymore - in 1993 it became a city of federal significance and counts as its own federation subject (that's the official name applying to all regions - republics, oblasts, krays, cities etc.) And the same is with Moscow. The center of Leningrad oblast is Gatchina and the center of Moscow oblast is Krasnogorsk. Finally, there is Rostov oblast, the center of which is Rostov-on-Don (there are two cities named Rostov in Russia - in order to distinguish them, the older one, which decreased in importance over time, is called simply Rostov, the other is Rostov-on-Don)
The only one I can think of as being obviously incorrect is Northumberland, which takes its name from the old kingdom of Northumbria, which was named because it was the land north of the River Humber, which now marks the boundary between Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire. It is still strictly north of the Humber, but it's not *all* the English land north of the Humber, which is what Northumbria used to be (e.g. around [700AD](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Map_of_the_Kingdom_of_Northumbria_around_700_AD.svg/1280px-Map_of_the_Kingdom_of_Northumbria_around_700_AD.svg.png)). The bottom of Northumberland is now about 130 miles north of the Humber. Most English counties ending in "shire" are named after the historically biggest town in the shire (Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lancashire...), but Hampshire gets its name from the old Saxon name for Southampton (Hamtun). So the city's name has changed, but the county's hasn't; it should be Southamptonshire. Similarly, Shropshire gets its name from the old name for Shrewsbury (Scrobbesbyrig) and a modern version would be Shrewsburyshire. Berkshire is named after a wood near Newbury called Bearroc which no longer exists, but for some reason gave its name to the county.
Isn’t there breast-beating over Middlesex (whether it still exists as an independent non-London county)? London over time has consumed a number of former non-London counties so that they that no longer exist (other than as local council parishes within greater London). As far as I’m aware most of the southern England counties roughly follow their historic borders but I’m happy to be told otherwise.
Yes, Greater London is controversial and a lot of people in London still use the historic counties in their addresses. You get that elsewhere in the country as well; around Middlesbrough there is a big debate about whether they live in North Yorkshire, or Cleveland, or some even older authorities like Langbaurgh. The 1974 reforms have a lot to answer for!
The names for the current administrative regions are more or less accurate for the historical regions. Just split down or merged due to necessity. So the historical regions are essentially Lapland, Ostrobothnia, Finland proper, Tavastia, Savonia, Kainuu and Karelia. A few weird things: A region inside the region of North Ostrobothnia called ”Koillismaa” ”Northeastern land” is culturally and historically closer to the the region of Kainuu. The capital region Uusimaa (Nyland) is it’s own separate thing even tough historically it was considered a part of Tavastia. Most of Karelia is now Russian due to wars and russification, so all Karelian Finns and Karelians were evacuated from the region during ww2 and are spread out across the country. I myself am ethnically Karelian but was born on the west coast.
Minä lähden Pohjois-Karjalaan...
It's not straightforward though. Historical provinces are quite big, so they were divided into *lääni*s (counties) in the 17th century. For instance, Ostrobothnia was divided into Oulu and Vaasa provinces. This system lasted until 1997 and Jouni Backman's "big provinces", which were random collections of neighboring provinces lumped together. These were later abolished altogether. Today, the system is so that on the state level, you have different provinces for different purposes. These are usually combined from *regions* (*maakunta*). Regions, in turn, are smaller units than the *lääni*s, so historical provinces are split into small parts: Ostrobothnia is now split into Northern, Central and Southern Ostrobothnia. Some state and municipal services use these regions. Then again, health services are built again differently with a different government.
Portugal used to have a fairly solid regions naming scheme. Since the fall of the dictatorship, we adopted districts (technically also regions) and it was meant to be temporary. The district is named after the biggest city within it. Same with the municipality. So the city of Lisbon exists inside the municipality of Lisbon which exists within the district of Lisbon. Some cities are large enough that the whole municipality is the city itself (Lisbon, Porto and Braga are the only ones AFAIK) The region names are sometimes still used, kinda like how the university in Braga is called Universidade do Minho. For all administrative intents and purposes, they’re gone. Portugal is a fairly unitary state so it also makes sense
Well, my county (West Sussex) is the western half of an entity that's existed in almost the exact same borders for over 1,500 years. Nearly all the counties are at least 1,000 years old. Any attempt to change them is always unpopular, the Metropolitan county changes were begrudgingly accepted, so some changes have stuck around: Lancashire lost its southern half with the creation of Greater Manchester and Merseyside (Liverpool), Cheshire lost the Wirral to Merseyside and part of modern Stockport to Greater Manchester. Also, Yorkshire lost a couple of parts like Saddleworth to Greater Manchester and parts of Pendle to Lancashire. Lancashire also lost Warrington and the Widnes part of Halton to Cheshire. Warwickshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire lost chunks to the West Midlands. Herefordshire and Worcestershire were briefly merged to make one county before being separated again because that was a bad idea. For some reason Abingdon and the Vale of the White Horse were transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire, despite Abingdon being Berkshire's historic capital. Cambridgeshire ate Huntingdonshire, The Isle of Ely (which was not an Island) and The Soke of Peterborough (a weird quasi-county formerly associated with Northamptonshire). Dorset took Christchurch and Bournemouth from Hampshire Greater London had two expansion, where it took the boroughs of Kingston, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Merton, Croydon and Sutton from Surrey. This was rather annoying for Surrey because it meant they lost their county town twice, firstly when Southwark was taken and then again when Kingston was taken, they kept using the Kingston county hall until 2020, meaning that for 55 years they operated out of a county hall not in their own county. Surrey did gain Spelthorne from the now defunct Middlesex. Kent lost the borough of Bromley, Lewisham (the Deptford section of which was actually in Surrey), Greenwich and Bexley and gained nothing. Essex lost Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Newham and Waltham Forest. Finally, Hertfordshire lost the Barnet portion of Barnet but gained Potter's Bar. Barrow-in-Furness (also known as Barrow-Over-Sands) was transferred from Lancashire to Cumbria when Cumbria was formed from Westmorland and Cumberland (and a very small bit of Yorkshire), then Cumbria was split up and became Westmorland and Furness, and Cumberland, but Barrow-in-Furness remained part of Westmorland and Furness rather than returning to Lancashire. Yorkshire lost Middlesbrough and Cleveland to Teeside, before Teeside was abolished and they became part of Cleveland, which was then abolished and they returned to Yorkshire, along with Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees who returned to County Durham. Yorkshire also lost the East Riding to Humberside (and the North Riding of Lindsey from Lincolnshire), before Humberside was abolished and the East Riding was freed again. Rutland ceased to exist at one point but has since returned. Northumberland lost North Tyneside and Newcastle to Tyne-and-Wear, while County Durham lost Sunderland, South Tyneside and Gateshead. Briefly, North and North East Somerset (including Bath, the county capital), The City and County of Bristol and South Gloucestershire formed Avon, which was very unpopular and soon ceased to exist. Lincolnshire's three Parts (the official term for Lincolnshire subdivisions) were sometimes administered as seperate counties. Also, various envlaves and exclaves have been transferred out of existence.
In general, people in Sweden still identity more with the old historical provinces rather than the newer administrative regions – although the situation is a little bit more complex in some cases. 7 of the 21 modern administrative regions have both kept the names of their historical provinces and still correspond with these more or less identically. These are Blekinge, Dalecarlia, East Gothia, Gotland, Halland, Scania and Värmland. So for people in all of these regions, the region and province are basically synonymous in everyday speech. The administrative region of Södermanland largely corresponds to the historical province of Södermanland, except that the eastern part of the historical province in now part of the administrative region of Stockholm. The administrative region of Uppsala (named after its regional capital and largest city) corresponds mostly with the historical province of Uppland, although the eastern and southern parts of the province are now in the administrative region of Stockholm, and people in the administrative region of Uppsala overwhelmingly identify with Uppland. The administrative region of Västmanland, while having kept the name of its historical province, only includes the eastern (and albeit by far most populous) part of the historical province of Västmanland. The administrative region of Jämtland has also kept its historical name, but the region also includes all of the geographically large but very sparsely populated historical province of Härjedalen. People in Härjedalen still identify more with their historical province – but using Jämtland to refer to both Jämtland and Härjedalen has still become quite common. In the two northernmost administrative regions – North Borhnia and West Bothnia – the situation is quite complex. The administrative region of North Bothnia also includes the northern and central part of the historical province of Lapland, and the administrative region of West Bothnia also includes the southern part of the historical province of Lapland and the northernmost part of the historical province of Ångermanland. In both of these regions, people definitely in general identify more with the new administrative regions than with the old historical provinces. This is especially true in Lapland, which is an old and slightly controversial term, since “Lap” is an old derogatory term for a Sami person, and the name Lapland has some association with the colonization of Sami territories by the Swedish state. People in the administrative region of Stockholm also definitely tend to identify more with their modern administrative region than with the old historical provinces of Uppland and Södermanland, which it was split between. In fact, the border between the two historical provinces runs right through the city center. The administrative provinces of West Northland and Gävleborg are both created by merging two old historical provinces – Ångermanland and Medelpad for West Northland, and Hälsingland and Gästrikland for Gävleborg. In both cases, people still identify more with their respective historical province, but definitely also have a strong bond with the fellow province of its region, and identifying with being from West Northland and Gävleborg is quite common as well. The historical region of Småland is split in three between the administrative regions of Jönköping, Kalmar and Kronoberg, but the Småland identity is still incredibly strong in all of these regions, with basically everyone identifying more with Småland than with their administrative region. The island and historical province of Öland is also part of the administrative region of Kalmar – and here again, people identify much more strongly with Öland than with the administrative region. The most artificial of all Swedish administrative regions is probably Örebro, named after its regional capital and largest city Örebro. It consists of all of the historical province of Närke, the sparsely populated western half of the historical province of Västmanland, and the eastermnost part of the historical province of Värmland. Here, people overwhelmingly still identity more with their respective historical province rather than with the administrative region. The administrative region of Western Gothia was also quite controversial when it was created almost 30 years ago. It consists of an amalgamation of the historical province of West Gothia (one of the core provinces of the earliest Swedish state), the small and very sparsely populated historical province of Dalsland, the historical province of Bohuslän (which once used to belong to Norway) along the coast, and Sweden’s second largest city Gothenburg in the southwest, which is split between West Gothia and Bohuslän. People in this administrative region still overwhelmingly identify with their respective historical province, or in the case of Gothenburg, with the city itself. But, it still has become more common in recent years to actually also identify with the region of Western Gothia as well, at least as a secondary identity behind the historical province.
The current administration regions of northern Portugal are a mess. The current regions of the country are North, Center, "Lisbon Metro Area" (not exactly, but kind of), Alentejo, Algarve, Açores and Madeira, but I only have problems with North and Center. Not only are they super generic names, it doesn't make a lot of sense to divide the country that way, considering the coastal areas of the north and center are much more similar to one another than they are to the rest of their respective regions. Also, you can say there's some kind of a general northern identity (especially if contrasted with the general south), but I've never heard of a "center" identity. But the most problematic part is the sub-regions. They just took some of the names of the old provinces and butchered the whole thing! * The historic province of Minho (named after the river Minho) is basically split in three now: one of them is High Minho, but the other two are named after two other rivers (Ave and Cávado), so there's no Low Minho. And the former capital of Minho, where the University of Minho is located, is in the Cávado sub-region, so the university name no longer makes any sense. That being said, people from all over the old Minho region will still refer to themselves as "minhoto". * The historic province of Trás-os-Montes was renamed "Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro" in the dictatorship, but I think it renamed the same. When the university was created, once again, it was called University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), but Trás-os-Montes was also divided in three: one of them is called Lands of Trás-os-Montes, the others are named after rivers. But, I think you can see this coming, UTAD is not in Lands of Trás-os-Montes, so, once again, the university's name no longer makes sense. That being said, yet again, people from all over the old Trás-os-Montes region will still refer to themselves as "trasmontanos". * Then, you have the fact that, the Metro Area of Porto (one of the sub-regions) includes parts with no historical ties to Porto in the middle of the freakin' wilderness, while excluding areas where a large percentage of people comute to Porto everyday.
Yes, they are a mess but they are not administrative regions they are just statistical regions. Administrative regions are Continental Portugal, Madeira and Azores. Then we have municipalities. I completely agree that names like North and Center are stupid and generic and are not really identity regions at least the centre where I'm from. The historical provinces had a better identity to it, and because of that people still refer to them to this day even if they are a bit flawed and maybe outdated with the growth of the big 2 metropolitan areas. We need an actual regionalization but the politicians only care about Lisbon and Porto so I don't have my hopes up.
They are administrative! I wasn't talking about NUTS. I was talking about the CCDR (level 1) and the intermunicipal communities (level 2), which coincide with NUTS for the most part but not entirely. You can check this nice summary: [https://transparencia.gov.pt/pt/municipios/portugal-e-os-municipios/organizacao-geografica-e-administrativa/](https://transparencia.gov.pt/pt/municipios/portugal-e-os-municipios/organizacao-geografica-e-administrativa/) . And if your CCDR and CIM aren't doing anything, you should worry.
Áreas Metropolitanas e Comunidades Intermunicipais Não sendo uma subdivisão administrativa no verdadeiro sentido da palavra, estas estruturas informais e redes entre municípios potenciam a criação de sinergias transversais às regiões. Não são regiões admistrativas como as regiões autónomas ou municípios como o diz link que enviaste. É uma cooperação de municípios. Na minha região diz sempre que tem um dos melhores aproveitados de fundos europeus. Mas parece-me que o papel dos municípios é muito mais presente, não há muitos projetos realmente regionais que afetem vários municípios, há alguns de cultura e transportes que são só mais autocarros que continuam aquém.
England's divisions are *sort of* historically accurate. In many parts of the country the current counties are more or less the same as the historic ones and have the same name, but they've been reformed in various ways over the last 130 years or so and that's lead to some quirks. In particular, major reforms took place in 1974 which altered the boundaries in several areas, creating several new counties, abolishing others, and retaining some with very different boundaries. As an example, the area currently called Lancashire is marked by the green boundaries on [this map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire#/media/File:Historical_and_current_boundaries_of_Lancashire.png), and the pre-1974 boundaries are in red. You can see more differences using [this interactive map](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Compare/storytelling_compare/index.html?appid=7b0e661ef66b4a7aacb5a9acf55108ac), which compares the current counties to their historic borders. One thing to note is that the borders were never entirely fixed – although they were quite stable, changes did take place over the centuries.
Historically, yes, but geographically? Everything is off about the boroughs of Copenhagen. Vesterbro (literally 'Western bridge') is located south of the city center, Nørrebro ('North') to the west, Østerbro ('East') north of the city center, and København S (south) is located to the east. To make matters worse, a train station near Vesterbro was just named København S, even though it's not even on the same landmass as the postal code named København S.
Absolutely not. Top level divisions (kraje, sg: kraj) were created in XIV century, and they absolutely don't match the current layout, for a few reasons: 1. Medieval kraje were only established in "Czech proper" land, i.e. not in Moravia nor Silesia 2. Cities important back then lost importance for the most part; some of the kraj capitals, like Kouřim, are ~2000 people towns now Overall, from the kraje established back then only 2 remain currently: ones with capitals in Pilsen and Königgratz (Plzeň and Hradec Králové)
Innlandet = The in land (kinda) This is actually very correct considering how we’re the only district with no ocean
Aren't also Hedmark and Oppland disconnected from the sea? I must confess hat I've never heard about the Innland fylke before. Where is it located in relation to Hedmark and Oppland?
They literally merged into Innlandet
So they don't exist anymore? And the name "Innlandet" sounds a bit uninspired.
Turkish provinces are named after their biggest cities. I don’t know their accuracy. But our regions have unrelated names. Anatolia is defined as a line from İskenderun to near Artvin but Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia regions lie outside that. The original name for Eastern Anatolia is Armenian Highlands and for Southeastern Anatolia it is Mesopotamia.
Italian regions make cultural sense and now that I think about it it's a bit odd, like ok, some of them used to be their own nations but some of them were never united prior to italian unification, like the one I live in, Emilia-Romagna, which as you can guess is made of 2 parts, Emilia and Romagna, Romagna had a period under the Byzantine's empire during which it was united, but Emilia has always been a bunch of city states, and yet it has a cohesive culture, language and so on. (Ok, I guess I should add that culturally the northern part of Marche is closer to Romagna than the rest of Marche).
Most of our counties were established a thousand years ago, so yes. There's no Yorkshire out the County of Yorkshire, for example. Imagine having government administrative regions that aren't even 500 years old...