American county names

Ooops!

check instead for the former:

http://www.institutions.org.uk/counties/WAL/welsh_counties


Amazing what a difference a mere _ makes!

>> Here in Scotland we pronounce it "Sh-ire" to rhyme with "fire".
>> In England it's pronounced either "Sheer" or "Shur"...as in York-sheer or York-shur for Yorkshire.

In L.A., if you pronounce Wilshire and Devonshire to rhyme with hair dryer, then you're not from around these parts ;-)

http://www.institutions.org.uk/counties/WAL/welsh_counties.htm

Excuse my mess up with the Welsh link....sawwwyyyyy!

Elaine:

I like it! :-) Just one point....what happened to the "T" in Wilshire??? At least I see you kept Devonshire intact! Nothing much you could drop from that name anyway, really!

mjd:
Naming American countries after English countries sounds a bit boring and unimaginative too me. But hey, who can resist names like Middlesex, Sussex, Wessex etc...the very epitome of Merrie Olde England...

Just one tiny correction to your post there, Fredrik.

Wessex is not, and never has been, a proper County. I think you meant Essex.

Wessex was the name of an old Anglo Saxon Kingdom in South and South West England, and was the most powerful of all the Kingdoms by the 10th century. Its capital city was Winchester.

One of its most famous Kings was King Alfred, who became overlord of all England. He defeated the Danes and actually encouraged the use of the English language, both its spoken and written forms, so one of the earlier pioneers of English.

He was the guy who allegedly burnt the cakes down in Somerset...(part of his Kingdom).

The regional name Wessex is still applied to those same areas of England, parts of the South and South West.

Essex is where THE girls come from......

New York counties

http://www.nysegov.com/citguide.cfm?context=citguide&content=munibycounty1

Damian,

>>Just one point....what happened to the "T" in Wilshire??? At least I see you kept Devonshire intact! Nothing much you could drop from that name anyway, really!<<

Isn't Akron, Ohio in Devoshire County?

<<Isn't Akron, Ohio in Devoshire County?>>

Fancy you asking ME that! LOL I've heard of Ohio of course, but Akron is lost on me. I can do a Sherlock and check it out for you if you like?

So you guys really HAVE messed up Devonshire as well then. If it's not "Ts" your dropping but "Ns" as well it seems! I reckon we ought to name a British place "Connecticu"" or "Michiga" and see how YOU guys like it! :-)

Anyway, why is the second "C" in Connecticut silent? Same reason as the "S" in Illinois I guess...and the second "S" in Arkansas. You guys are just as illogical as we are here!

How come New York has a Wyoming County? Does Wyoming have a New York County?

Yeah...you guys really ARE as muxed ip as we are.

Oh, sorry...I should have started by quoting you, rather than addressing you. Naturally, you wouldn't know that Devo was from Akron, Ohio, and that there isn't really a Devoshire. I should've thrown in a smiley, for good measure. Oh, well.

As for the silent letters in REAL place names in the US, sometimes the names originated as French transliterations of the original tribal names, and that leaves lots of room for silent letters.

Interesting.

I'm not an American but I do take issue with the assertion that American placenames are "boring." Far from it, there's plenty of history and eccentricity in US toponyms.

Even the most seemingly bland ones often represent the name of some pioneering character or other.

As to "silent letters" in words, I always love that expression.

There are of course, NO silent letters in words. What we really mean when we say "silent letters" is that English spelling is not particularly efficient in terms of phonetic representation.

Damian:
Wyoming county in New York? I think I have read that the state was named after a popular novel at the end of the 19th century, so maybe this county also was.

There are several towns, counties, rivers, valleys, and even mountains called Wyoming on the East Coast. I think Wyoming was originally an Eastern tribe of Native Americans. How the state got its name is lost on me.

>> Anyway, why is the second "C" in Connecticut silent? <<

"Connecticut" is an Anglicization of "Quonectucket" (Pine Tree River) the Mohican name of the river that cuts through most of New England. The Penacook tribes, however, called the river "Quinnitucket" (Long River) which ended up influencing the way the Puritan settlers pronounced "Connecticut."