Counties of England without "-shire"

No, he'd be correct to refer to these as ceremonial counties; the term refers to areas to which a Lord Lieutenant is appointed, and includes all of what might be considered the 'modern' counties of England. Ceremonial's not the same as historic!

So-called 'Ceremonial Counties' have only existed as something distinct from counties for administrative purposes since the Lieutenancies Act 1997 that came into force on the 1st of July that year.

All the answers in this quiz had Lord Lieutenants before the act (Bristol was given Avon's from 1 April 1996). However, some counties in England were (re)created by the Act by being listed in paragraph 3. However all of them (initially) included of a county of the same name that merely covered a smaller area due to new counties being formed out of it.

The act was trying to sort out some of the mess the 90s changes were making with the creation of loads of new counties - eg East Sussex had a Lord Lieutenant already, but the newly-created (1st April '97) county of Brighton and Hove didn't and they didn't want to give it one, so East Sussex was redefined, for the purposes of the act, to consist of both the county of East Sussex and the county of Brighton and Hove.