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Concept
Shire
Summary
Shire (SaIr, also Si@r) is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries such as Australia. It is generally synonymous with county. It was first used in Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century. In some rural parts of Australia, a shire is a local government area; however, in Australia it is not synonymous with a "county", which is a lands administrative division.
The word shire derives from the Old English sćir, from the Proto-Germanic skizo (sćira), denoting an 'official charge' a 'district under a governor', and a 'care'. In the UK, shire became synonymous with county, an administrative term introduced to England through the Norman Conquest in the later part of the eleventh century. In contemporary British usage, the word counties also refers to shires, mainly in places such as Shire Hall.
In regions with rhotic pronunciation, such as Scotland, the word shire is pronounced ʃaɪər; in areas of non-rhotic pronunciation, the final R is silent, unless the next word begins in a vowel sound. In England and Wales, when shire is a place-name suffix, the vowel is unstressed and usually shortened (monophthongized); the pronunciations include ʃər and ʃɪər, with the final R pronunciation depending on rhoticity. The vowel is normally reduced to a single schwa, as in Leicestershire ˈlɛstərʃər or ˈlɛstərʃɪər and Berkshire ˈbɑːrkʃər or ˈbɑːrkʃɪər.
The system was first used in the kingdom of Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century, along with the West Saxon kingdom's political domination. In Domesday (1086) the city of York was divided into shires. The first shires of Scotland were created in English-settled areas such as Lothian and the Borders, in the ninth century. King David I more consistently created shires and appointed sheriffs across lowland shores of Scotland.
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