East Riding of Yorkshire is still its official name. When Yorkshire was split into four counties in the mid 1970s the North Riding remained much the same area and was renamed North Yorkshire; the West Riding was split in two to form West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire; and the East Riding remained much the same area and was the only part to keep its original title.
I'm surprised you've never heard it as not only is it referred to as such on anything official, most people in the area still make the distinction and call it the East Riding, rather than East Yorks.
Middlesex ceased to exist in the 1960’s when the boundaries of Greater London were redrawn. The majority went to London, but the southern part went to Surrey and the North went to Hertfordshire, I believe.
Love this quiz - it's always Berkshire I trip up on, everytime. Would love to see a map version of this, where you have to match the county accurately. And for those missing Middlesex, Wessex etc maybe we should do an historic version one day :-)
west saxons; east saxons; middle saxons; south saxons; no room for north saxons as that was where the angles were - eg east anglia -.... yes all right - where are the west angles - no room becasue of the mercians
good one, my typing not so quick, this is more of an "administrative area" list though, as The City of London, Bristol , Greater London, Greater Manchester etc are not counties. Greater London takes up space in the counties of Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Essex...just like Chicago (my favourite holiday destination!) goes into Cook County and DuPage county, but there is no County of Chicago. Some counties do not exist anymore
Bristol has been a county since 1353 and still is today. As a resident of Bristol, my county is always listed as Bristol on my address; there are no other counties it could be listed under. Also, having grown up in the London Borough of Bromley I agree that areas such as this are quite complicated; whilst my postcode was a Kent postcode (TN) and my address listed as Kent, my council was a London council. However there are other boroughs, such as Lewisham where I've also lived, which do not cross into any home counties, so the address is listed under the Greater London county as, like Bristol, there are no other counties it comes under. I can't comment on the other places you mentioned though.
@Jock- Next time you are in Chicago look me up, I'm at 54th & Bishop. Just drive down, get out, and proclaim "I'm on holiday". The men with guns will assist you to my place.
Good point. Notice for instance the several comments on the recent California counties quiz left by Californians who claim to have gotten fewer than half the answers right. England and California have comparable population sizes.
Various governments have mucked about with local government so much in the UK now that there's a confusing array of different counties, from the traditional ones, new made up ones (made up in the 1970s), ceremonial ones, plus a range of other local authorities. Very often, huge lumps of one county have been taken from one county and added to another at the whim of some government official. All in all, it's very confusing and it's no wonder people don't care much these days about counties (with a few exceptions, like Yorkshire).
(NEW) England, (NEW) Hampshire, FOUR DIFFERENT (NEW) Yorks, (NEW) London, the list goes on! Dear England, please stop copying American place names! Thank you!
It's a pity that the 'REAL' counties of England have been butchered by the bureaucrats into these so called rational areas. Tradition shouldn't be left to red-tape handlers in London.
Real counties are mostly meaningless, only really Yorkshire and Cornwall are actually different enough for county to be important. For everyone else, being Northern/Midlands/Southern is enough.
There is nowhere like enough time if we have to write "shire" after each county; we rarely use the whole name when speaking so surely just the county name should suffice?
The current answers can be justified as the current set-up, an the map shows the way anyway; - though I'd remove the word 'ceremonial' as I 'think' that refers to the old countries before 1970s
Ceremonial counties are distinct from traditional counties (although some do match). Cumberland and Westmoreland are two traditional counties, but they are not ceremonial counties. Check out the link to the Wikipedia article used as a source for this quiz, it explains what these counties actually are.
Argh, why do I always forget Shropshire? I look at the alphabetical list and can't think of anything to come between Rutland and Somerset and spend far too long wondering if Salisburyshire is a county.
Hampshire is named after Southampton (which used to be called Hampton before people started adding the South- prefix, to distinguish it from the other Hampton, i.e. Northampton).
Similarly, the old county town of Wilts was Wilton (just outside Salisbury) before someone in their wisdom decided Trowbridge (gasp!) was more appropriate
yikes, the auto-shire enhancement really messed me up. I usually end with 2 minutes left but barely finished in time with all the shires popping in at the front of each county name. Is Lancashire really called "Lanc" by anyone or are we to see it as abbreviation for slow typists? (I, btw, am a slow typist)
Some oddities. Needed Wiltshire for Wiltshire, but only Berk for stuff like Berkshire. Needed West Yorkshire, but not the shire for East, North and South, etc.
SO , after screwing up cause you were accepting answers before they were complete...i.e. -shire, and having to erase constantly, why is it that West Yorkshire has to be input all they way? Out of all the
-shires, this is the only one that is not accpeted in "short form" (West York)
Why can't they spell the WHOLE name out. Much annoyed with the laziness. I type so fast that i can't flow into next county because I have to delete the ending of the last.
I assume that ceremonial counties means any place that has a Lord Lieutenant. Otherwise I have difficulty in east and West Sussex and NOT Lindsey; Kesteven and Holland.
Why can;t we just simply go back to pre 1974 It was so much simpler.
By the way, I think that historically Bristol has at some time counted as part of Gloucestershire, but never as Somerset
You get my vote! Bring back the pre-'74 counties (they had been around for a 1,000 years before then, some much longer). As someone who is from Sussex, it pains me to type out East Sussex and West Sussex.
Living in New England helps on this quiz. I guessed a bunch of counties and towns from New England and a lot of them were there. It's also nice that it gave them without adding shire.
That is very offensive. As a person living in Worcestershire, this is just down-right rude. But, what do you expect from someone living in London? They are just oblivious of the rest of the UK.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the origin of the word 'shire' is from Old English scīr, meaning ‘care, official charge, county’, of Germanic origin.
Aaarrrgghhh..... I forgot Dorset, my favourite county (although I've never been there, but I've heard that it has the most beautiful scenery, and it is the setting of most of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books (my favourite childhood author))!
can you add a type in so when you write warkwick it will count as warwick? The wikipedia source is wrong, i know, but people reading it and taking the quiz can get muddled up in confusion.
I'm surprised you've never heard it as not only is it referred to as such on anything official, most people in the area still make the distinction and call it the East Riding, rather than East Yorks.
#familyguy
-shires, this is the only one that is not accpeted in "short form" (West York)
This is too hard
Why can;t we just simply go back to pre 1974 It was so much simpler.
By the way, I think that historically Bristol has at some time counted as part of Gloucestershire, but never as Somerset