Misplaced Pages

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This page is fledgling. It shouldn't yet be thought of as final as other pages in the Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (...) series

General issues

If the name of a place has changed over time, what name do we use to refer to that place? When places 'change ownership' during the course of time, what convention should be followed?

Specific issues

Counties of England

Capitalization not treated here (Carried with 12 in favour, 2 against)

We should use the current, administrative, county. E.g. Eton is in Berkshire, not Buckinghamshire.

This approach is consistent with most local and national government literature, some private sector literature, will be familar to most readers and writers, and indeed the approach will apply even if boundaries change again. It is also easy for people to find out where a particular village is, as maps with administrative boundaries are freely available online. While historic county maps do exist, it is hard to find one with maps of modern urban areas and city and borough boundaries transposed against historic counties. It is also consistent with other encyclopedias such as the 1911 Encyclopedia, which specifically Cromarty 'Ross-shire' a 'former county'.

We should mention historic counties in articles about places and in references to places in a historic context, but only as an afternote. In geographic references elsewhere we could use the ceremonial counties, as as pointed out, it is not useful to state that "Luton is a town in the county of Luton". We should especially use ceremonial counties in listing places by county.

In historic references we should make sure to note that the county at the time was not the same as the county now, if relevant.

Articles about counties should not be split up and should not be disambiguation pages. They should treat the counties as one entity which has changed its boundaries with time. We should not take the minority position that they still exist with the former boundaries. We should mention that this position exists, especially on pages like Yorkshire and Middlesex.

With respect to the areas covered by unitary authorities, we should only call them counties if they (a) are legislatively defined as such, and (b) are significantly larger than the town they are centred upon, or have no such centring. So we would refer to the county of Milton Keynes, the county of Swindon, and the county of York, but we would say just Leicester, Derby, Stoke-on-Trent.

Metropolitan counties should be treated as counties - the fact that they no longer have councils has no relevance on their legal status.

With respect to which version of the traditional boundaries we should acknowledge as having historic importance - the versions before the 1847 revisions would probably be best - they include many more anomalies, like Islandshire and other exclaves.

Examples of acceptable things:

• Coventry is in the West Midlands, and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire
• Most of the pigeons were found at Abingdon, then part of Berkshire
• Middlesex is a traditional county of England, now mostly covered by Greater London
• Southwark is a village in the London Borough of Southwark in Greater London. It is in the traditional borders of Surrey

Examples of unacceptable things:

• Coventry is a town in Warwickshire, and administered by the metropolititan administrative "county" of West Midlands
• Brixton is a place in Surrey, England within the former metropolitan "countiy" of Greater London and in the London Borough of Lambeth.
• Middlesex was a county of England. It was abolished in 1965 after being gutted in 1889 to form the County of London. The end.

States in the U.S.A.

Countries of Europe

There have been many changes as the result of two World Wars (eg the disappearance, reappearance, and change in area of Poland), many minor conflicts (eg the breakup of Yugoslavia), and peaceful political reorganisations (eg the division of Czechoslovakia)