Actually, in the late '90s many of these counties were abolished or broken up. Hereford and Worcester are now separate again, Avon, Cleveland and Humberside don’t exist any more, nor does Berkshire except for ceremonial purposes, and many cities became administratively separate from their counties.
…and rhyming slang purposes, I believe!
What about Wales, Scotland and NI - are we not part of the UK?
as far as I can remember, the last time I was in Wales the list was (they keep changing them you see):
Anglesey
Breconshire
Caernarvonshire
Cardiganshire
Camarthenshire
Denbighshire
Flintshire
Glamorgan
Merionethshire
Monmouthshire
Montgomeryshire
Pembrokeshire
Radnorshire
would struggle with Scotland and NI though (and England thinking about it)
I used to know those. In Russian. I took a year of Russian during my senior year of high school. Unfortunately, that was almost ten years ago, so I’ve forgotten them.
“A Moment In Time,” a radio program heard on NPR and produced by a professor at the University of Richmond, here in myfaircity, just covered the split between Virginia and “that other place.”
The counties that now make up “that other place” were generally settled by Scotch-Irish, Welsch, and German immigrants, who, for a variety of reasons, had fewer, if any, slaves. The residents felt shortchanged by the government here in myfaircity and held a long simmering animus toward their Tidewater brothers. In 1861 (IIRC) representatives from “that other place” held a constitutional convention and elected to separate themselves from the Commonwealth. Lincoln was struck between a rock and a hard place, as the Constitution required that any new states created from old states had to have an affirmative vote of the legislature from the parent state. Knowing that the creation of WVA couldn’t be done according to the tenants of the Constitution, Lincoln said “Well, VA is acting extra-Constitutionally in thining it can leave the Union, I’ll act extra-Constitutionally and sign the law creating West Virginia.”
And we continue to thank him to this day.
Maybe we should choose any US state the size of England or larger, and attempt to name it’s counties.
Here’s an off the top of my head attempt to name some/most/all the German states:
Westphalia
Hessen
Bayern
Berlin
Niedersachsen
Sachsen
Baden-Württemberg
Bremen
Hamburg
Thuringia
Brandenburg
I know there’s a few missing there (there’s another Saxony that I’m drawing a blank on…)
Sachsen-Anhalt.
Lobsang is such a cutie. 
swoon
plnnr – My wife and I visited “that other place” on vacation some years back, and heard an extra chapter to the history you gave: The non-slaveholding counties west of the Appalachian mountains economically relied on rail and road routes over the mountains. Though the residents of the counties in that area (Pendleton, Grant, Hardy, Mineral, Hampshire, Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson?) sympathized with the Confederacy, and had no desire to secede from Virginia, they were controlled by the Union, and Lincoln made them part of the package to ensure the new state’s viability. Does that jibe with what you know?
The Federal Government gave up direct rule in 1974.
Some of the counties of Texas.
Austin
Bexar
Bowie
Brazoria
Fannin
Fayette
Hood
Houston
Huntsville
Jack
Jackson
Jasper
Jeff Davis
Jefferson
Lamar
Liberty
Lubbock
Mason
Midland
Montgomery
Moore
Nacogdoches
Orange
Reagan
Real
Red River
Rockwall
Sabine
Stonewall
Travis
Trinity
Tom Green
Walker
Washington
Wise
I had a little bit of help. But those that I counted to put on the list I had on the tip of my tongue anyways. Of course.
The counties of South Carolina:
Abbeville
Aiken
Allendale
Anderson
Bamberg
Barnwell
Beaufort
Berkeley
Calhoun
Charleston
Cherokee
Chester
Chesterfield
Clarendon
Colleton
Darlington
Dillon
Dorchester
Edgefield
Fairfield
Florence
Georgetown
Greenville
Greenwood
Hampton
Horry
Jasper
Kershaw
Lancaster
Laurens
Lee
Lexington
Marion
Marlboro
McCormick
Newberry
Oconee
Orangeburg
Pickens
Richland
Saluda
Spartanburg
Sumter
Union
Williamsburg
York
That’s entirely from memory, to the tune of Yankee Doodle. I did have to sing it to remember them all, though. There’s a Tom Green county in Texas? I’d be embarassed.
Hey now, Tom Green is a respectable man in this state.
It’ll be really something if someone could do all of the Georgia counties by memory.
… And to add to the polyvirginian confusion, the southwestern parts of plain old Virginia are farther west than any part of West Virginia. BTW the way Lincoln weaseled around it was that a meeting was held of a remainder of Union-loyalist Assemblymen from (Greater) Virginia, the legal fiction was assumed that the secessionists had vacated their seats so that remainder was a quorum of the “real” Virginia, and they approved the deal.
Oblasts and okrugs. Not that I can name any of them,
From cataloging urban planning-related Web sites, I got to memorize the states and provinces of …
South Africa
Gauteng (renamed from Witwaterstrand, I think)
Eastern Cape
Western Cape
Northern Cape
Mumpumpbumalunga (or something like that)
Kwazulu-Natal
North West
Free State (formerly Orange Free State - what happened to the “Orange?”
Australia (with capitals / largest metropolitan areas!)
Victoria / Melbourne
New South Wales / Sydney
South Australia / Adelaide
Western Australia / Perth
Northern Territory / Darwin
Queensland / Brisbane
Tasmania / Hobart
I don’t think the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra) is a state; it’s the equivalent of our District of Columbia.
How could you gorget El Paso, Deaf Smith, and Cooter?
This looks like a list a list of street names in an upper-middle class, 1970s-era Upstate New York suburb?
You forgot Limpopo (formerly Northern Transvaal, renamed Northern in 1995 and Limpopo last year), and it’s Mpumalanga (formerly Eastern Transvaal). Gauteng used to be Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging; Orange was dropped from Free State to mark the abolition of apartheid (Orange was felt to be too closely associated with Afrikaans nationalist politics).
Ok, the counties of Ohio…from memory. I’m starting from the center and spiralling out, because that’s how I learned them when I worked at AAA.
Franklin
Delaware
Licking
Fairfield
Pickaway
Madison
Union
Marion
Morrow
Knox
Coshocton
Muskingum
Perry
Hocking
Ross
Fayette
Greene
Clark
Champaign
Logan
Hardin
Wyandot
Crawford
Richland
Ashland
Wayne
Holmes
Tuscarawas
Guernsey
Noble
Morgan
Athens
Vinton
Jackson
Pike
Highland
Clinton
Warren
Montgomery
Miami
Shelby
Auglaize
Allen
Putnam
Hancock
Seneca
Huron
Lorain
Medina
Summit
Stark
Carroll
Harrison
Belmont
Monroe
Washington
Meigs
Gallia
Lawrence
Scioto
Adams
Brown
Clermont
Hamilton
Butler
Preble
Darke
Mercer
Van Wert
Paulding
Defiance
Williams
Henry
Fulton
Wood
Lucas
Sandusky
Ottawa
Erie
Cuyahoga
Lake
Geauga
Portage
Ashtabula
Trumbull
Mahoning
Columbiana
Jefferson
Whew! 88 in all! It really came in handy when helping people plan out their vacation routes!
And I had most of Indiana and a fair chunk of Pennsylvania memorized too, before I left that job.