County Names Tell Us a Story

County names tell American history in a unique way. More than any other kind of political geography, they tell us who our forebears wanted to honor. Men in London named the original states, and most of the rest have Native names, usually by way of geography. Towns and villages often got their names organically, taking them from taverns, settlers’ names, or geographic features. Counties, by contrast, were named by legislatures that saw the act as an opportunity to honor a person, an event, or even an Indian tribe. Each one was a conscious choice.

Virginia first established eight “shires” in 1634, using the pre-Norman term. Accomac Shire and Warrosquyoake Shire carried Algonquian names. James City Shire, Charles City Shire, and Charles River Shire honored the then-former and current kings of England (James I and Charles I). Henrico Shire took its name from Henricus, a 1611 settlement named for Henry Frederick, the Prince of Wales (who died young in 1612). Elizabeth City Shire was named for his sister, Elizabeth, the Queen of Bohemia. Warwick Shire took its name from Robert Rich, the 2nd Earl of Warwick and a leading member of the Virginia Company. The incorporation of the term “city” into the names of three counties reflects their evolution from an earlier mode of local governance.

While Nansemond County, created in 1646, carried another Native name, most counties for the next century honored English royalty. Reflecting the origins of the House of Hanover, many 18th-century counties have German names. It also became routine to name a new county after the governor or (more often) the resident lieutenant governor, producing Goochland, Albemarle, Dinwiddie, Fauquier, Botetourt, Fincastle, Berkeley, and Dunmore Counties.

In 1749, Prince William, the Duke of Cumberland, became the first man since Charles I to have a second county named for him after his success in putting down the Jacobite uprising of 1745. A county was also named for Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, perhaps for his role in keeping the Catholic Irish out of that war. Halifax and Bedford were named for other colonial administrators, and Loudoun and Amherst were named for commanders in the French & Indian War.

After George III's coronation, his wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, became the first woman to have two counties named for her, both in 1765. That year also brought the repeal of the hated Stamp Act, and Pittsylvania County was named after Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder for his role in the repeal and for his active defense of American rights.

With Revolution brewing, the conventions behind more than 60 county names began to wind down. Though a Tory, Governor Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron of Botetourt, was popular, and a vast frontier county was named for him in 1770. He died that same year, and Berkeley County was added in his honor in 1772. Dunmore County and Fincastle County were both created the same year to celebrate his successor, John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore. Murray was also Viscount Fincastle, though his son may have used it as a courtesy title, and some believe the county was named for the younger man. Dunmore was soon despised for attempting to suppress the Revolution in Virginia, and neither county name survived the decade.

For 16 decades, Virginia was far better than other colonies at localizing and dispersing power by creating new counties. However, the King’s Privy Council began vetoing new counties in the years before war began. In the Old Dominion, each county elected two men to the House of Burgesses. The demand for county splits was greatest in the west, where the population was growing quickly. Western men were also typically Presbyterian, Scotch-Irish, and independent-minded: precisely the sorts of men the Crown wanted to disempower. Thomas Jefferson included the vetoes in the grievances in the Declaration of Independence: “He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.”

After Independence was declared, Virginia quickly created five new counties, naming three of them for three rebels: George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Richard Montgomery, who had just died leading the Continental Army’s attack on Quebec City. They also revived the practice of using Indian names that year when they created Powhatan County, remembering the chief who had played such an outsized role in the colony’s earliest years. Other Indians, including the Nottoway Tribe, Pocahontas, Logan, and the Mingo Tribe, would be honored in later years.

The last county named for a British official came in 1778. It was named for Charles Watson-Wentworth, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. Briefly a Whig prime minister in the 1760s, he had successfully pushed for repeal of the Stamp Act. He was now a vocal member of the opposition. The county’s name was a poke in the eye to King George and Lord Frederick North, the current Prime Minister. It also presaged Rockingham’s role in Britain’s recognition of American independence. When the North government fell in 1782, Rockingham once again became Prime Minister (but he died of influenza just 14 weeks later).

Independence brought an explosion of settlement in western territory that belonged to Virginia. Virginia ceded the Northwest Territory to Congress, but retained both Kentucky and West Virginia, where nearly all new counties were named for Revolutionary heroes for years to come. Many of them are memorials to men we no longer know. For the curious, however, each is a portal into the past, revealing who the Founding generation’s own heroes were. 

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.