Meanwhile, Surrey has been Surrey for… a very long time indeed. And it has no abbreviation at all.
All hail Surrey.
pan
Dorking.
snigger
Bah
Dated someone from there.
Name of place fully appropriate for residents within.
Enough said.
Kabbes is a Dorking resident.
more sniggering
I can’t get enough Dorking, personally.
I thought Gropecunt Lane was in Lunnon Town. No doubt Steve Wright has his own reasons for locating it in Oxford, however. 
I have nothing to add, save that Bournemouth belongs in Hampshire and anyone who says otherwise is a Dorset Dumpling.
Not so baffling surely? – before the invention of the county of Greater Manchester, Manchester was in the county of Lancashire.
Still, all this talk of Bollockshire, Arseborough etc., leads me tenuously to the conundrum: Which three English Football League clubs have swear words in there name?
Answer: Scunthorpe Utd, Arsenal and…
Manchester Fucking United
Appypollyloggies.
What is it with gerund place names in southeast England? Dorking, Barking, Woking. (I married someone from the last place, for a while.)
The Great Unwashed’s bad joke reminds me of one I’ve heard. Name three fishes that begin and end with the letter k.
- Kippered haddock
- Killer shark
- Kilmarnock
Blame the French.
Yes, Steve Wright, I suddenly remembered the proper cognomen of that particular lane about three minues after posting…useful thing, the memory…if only I could access it when it bloody counted!
Please tell me that they haven’t changed it in the name of PC-ness!
Shitlington Hall is in Northumberland, by the by.
Friend of mine lives (unwillingly) in Dunstable. Local youths take delight in vandalising the road signs by obscuring the “D.” Big laffs.
No, not the French, the Saxons.
Yes, it was clearly unsuitable, so they changed it to Pigfelch Avenue.
OK, not really.
My personal favorite is Noplace in Northumberland. Just try telling that to a policeman when he asks you where you live.
pan
I believe there is (or used to be) indeed a Gropecunt Lane in London as well as Oxford.
I can only assume, mystifying as the etymology may be, that the term derives from some trade or activity that was popular in both locations. But precisely what trade or activity, I cannot envisage. Nope. Definitely completely utterly unable to imagine it. (I was raised by Sunday School teachers, as I have oft remarked.)
May I point out one small piece of trivia about that famed street in Oxford:
I swear my couny has changed from Worcestershire to Hereford-and-Worcestershire and back again (Hereforshire similarly) though I may have got this the wrong way round, or imagined it.
Counties normally play no part in addressess, but if you don’t know the postcode, the post office is generally helpful if you address your letter to:
Name,
#, Streetname
City
Abbreviation for County
though it asks you politely not to.
I’d rather blame the French if it’s all the same to you.
Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that 29 years after the boundary changes, some people have yet to take notice.
I mean I know there are slow learners around, but 29 years?
I don’t live in a county at all - they got rid of it and put a unitary authority in instead.
Just adding to the OP’s confusion