I’ve heard of North Umberland. Is there a South Umberland?
In New York state there is a town called New Platz. What I want to know, is what was so special about Old Paltz, or perhaps, just plain Paltz, that a new version was deemed necessary. Perhaps Classic Paltz failed and New Paltz is the sequal.
No - the Umber that is referred to here is the modern Humber river. Northumberland was the land north of the Humber. A “southumberland”, if you wanted to define such, would be all the rest of Britain south of that line.
- Tamerlane
“Paltz” comes from “Rhineland Pfalz” where many of the town founders were from. Sometimes the area was called “The Pfalz.” Pfalz turned into Paltz and since everybody was in New York, there was a “New” tacked on.
Historically, Yorkshire was divided into four parts, three of which were called “ridings” because there were three of them, and the fourth being the City of York. The word “riding” was derived from “thriding”, meaning a third part, and the “th” got lost becase the preceding word ends in “t” or “th”: East Riding, West Riding and North Riding. If there had been four of them, they would have been “farthings”, as in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Shire. So there could not have been a “South Riding”: it would have been as illogical as a three-semester year.
There have been several boundary changes in the area, but the big one was in 1974, when the West Riding was effectively split into West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. I suspect the reason was that the county had become too big, because it contained several large cities, including Bradford, Leeds, Halifax and Sheffield.
(Personal note: I grew up in the West Riding of Yorkshire – in Leeds.)
Everthing is prefixed with ‘t’ in Yorkshire, isn’t it?
Nay – with “th”, thou kenst 
I’m a Wakefield girl. Go Yorkshire. 
You learn something new everyday. I didn’t know there wasn’t always a South Yorkshire. Just a lack of an East Yorkshire!
These Yorkshiremen do have an inflated view of the place 
(Halifax is no city!)
Giles, thanks for clarifying my post - you’re absolutely right, of course.
I’ve lived in Hull (apart from a spell in Huddersfield) all my life, and this county has had three different names in that time: East Riding, North Humberside and then East Yorkshire. The whole “Humberside” thing was loathed by everyone I knew, and unworkable even when the bridge connecting the two halves was built.
I’m pretty sure that the original reorganisation of Yorkshire, which led to West Yorkshire being divided and to the creation of Humberside, was fundamentally gerrymandering.
Here in Massachusetts, Suffolk County is generally north of Norfolk County. Essex County is in the right place, at least vis-a-vis Middlesex County, but we don’t have a Sussex County to make it really work.
We feel your pain.
We have a town around here called East Northport.
There is a Northport, and East Northport is south of it.
Around New Haven we have North, East, and West Havens, but no South Haven. The obvious explanation is that South Haven would be in the middle of the Long Island Sound…
My favorite factoid of this nature:
Salem, NY, is 163 miles north of North Salem, NY.
More New Jersey non-sequiturs:
Ridgewood/Westwood/Norwood – these lie in that order in an almost perfectly straight line running west to east.
Orange/West Orange/East Orange/South Orange – West Orange is north-north-north-west of Orange, and South Orange is west-west-south of Orange. Oh well, at least East Orange is due east of Orange.
Plainfield/North Plainfield/South Plainfield/Westfield – North Plainfield is due west of Plainfield. Westfield is east-east-north of the whole mess. (N.P. and Westfield should swap names.) They got South Plainfield right, though.
And don’t even get me started on how certain NFL football teams continue to be associated with New York despite playing in Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. And it is Giants Stadium, Jets fans, not “the Meadowlands”. The Meadowlands is nothin’ but a friggin’ swamp. It’s where the New York and New Jersey wiseguys dump bodies, capice? At least the Jets’ corporate HQ was based in New York… well, Long Island. But they’re setting up a new base… in New Jersey.