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[Orange Wizard]

Counties are a British thing. Because they used to have counts.

[Avis-Mergulus]

Wait, what? Is Dwarfy originally from 'Murica, or are we talking about somewhere else with counties?

That's a meat map. It shows the locations of cuts on the cow. Your vegetarian is showing

I get that, I just thought... actually I can't remember what I thought. I had just woken up.
Mainly the use of "county" threw me, I thought that was only a US thing. Unless that was the joke. >.>

As far as I remember, Dwarfy is Norn Irish. Ireland has counties.
But yeah, I guess it's originally a British thing. Does anywhere else in the Commonwealth have them, though?

[scriver]

But yeah, I guess it's originally a British thing. Does anywhere else in the Commonwealth have them, though?

For further info: Originally it was a French(/Latin) thing. The Normans brought the word with them drop their own language. Before that the English had earls and earldoms.

Counties are a British thing. Because they used to have counts.

*Still have counts

[Orange Wizard]

Counts don't do anything in the counties, the counties have councils

[Reelya]

For further info: Originally it was a French(/Latin) thing. The Normans brought the word with them drop their own language. Before that the English had earls and earldoms.

That was in earlier times. They just don't count.

[scriver]

Counts don't do anything in the counties, the counties have councils

That doesn't change that they still have them

[Loud Whispers]

Australia's state borders are literally just squares, but NZ's region borders are all squiggly. Explain that.

I recall there was that one French statesman, whilst he was carving up West Africa and putting loads of straight lines instead of squiggles, he figured that since the area was mostly uninhabited desert without any resources in them it wouldn't really make much difference what the lines meant. Well, until they turned out to be inhabited, full of resources and became nation states

Same principle for Australia, where most of it was desert that couldn't be used, whilst New Zealand was pretty connected by sea and had loads of people already there, meaning parsing out political boundaries was more important when they first sent cartographers

Counties are a British thing. Because they used to have counts.

*Still have counts

Viscounts
Not sure what the difference is myself, I think it's something to do with inheritance or appointment of the title

Also Earls and Earldoms survived the Norman invasion, with the Normans using Earls and Earldoms as is to continue administration

And then there's this guy, who's the sole reason why all battle-priests in fantasy are depicted wielding maces and hammers. Gj Odo

[scriver]

A viscount is a half-count, above the rank of baron but below that of a full count.

[Loud Whispers]

Yet lacking counts, we have viscounts

[scriver]

Also yes, originally viscounts were non-hereditary, but so was counts. Viscounts developed into hereditary titles in Britain during the Normans (who also brought the title).

And yeah, it seems I was mistaken about England still having counts. After a quick search it looks like all county/earl level gentry are called earls these days. I was under the impression that England used both counts and earls depending on the history of the title.

[Orange Wizard]

They just don't count.

Ba dum a tish

[Reelya]

... You missed the pun in the first sentence. Earlier times.

[Orange Wizard]

Crap

[Loud Whispers]

Let's not duke this out in puns

[TheBiggerFish]

Geez.  I'm not going to keep count, nosir.