Durham is the only British county to be regularly referred to in the form “County X” because it’s the only one of the ancient counties that was never a shire (as is explained in the section “Ancient Origins” in this Wikipedia entry):
Hence, it could not be referred to as “Durhamshire” in the analogous way to the other ancient counties. (Please, someone correct me if I’ve got this wrong. I know I’ve read this before and I hope I’m telling the story straight.)
you don’t need a count to have a county. There were a few regions in England that were counties palantine - the king delegated greater governmental powers to the holders of those counties than to other title-holders: Durham, Lancaster, Cheshire (and maybe Cornwall, although it is a duchy). The reason was that those counties were some of the farthest away from London and the king’s personal control, and also at risk from their neighbours, the Scots and the Welsh (and the French, in the case of Cornwall). Note, though, that as royal power increased, those titles tended to come back into royal control: Cornwall is the right of the monarch’s eldest son, the Earldom of Chester is associated with the title of Prince of Wales, and the Queen holds the Duchy of Lancaster.
Durham was assigned to the Bishop of Durham, a royal appointee who either had no sons (pre-Reformation) or could not pass it to his sons (post-Reformation), since the bishopric was not inheritable. This meant that the Crown could safely delegate that power of the county palatine, since the Bishop would be the King’s man.
As far as the Earl/Countess issue goes:
An Underground Education by Richard Zacks offers this on p.171
He includes it among such examples as rooster replacing cock and donkey for ass out of linguistic shift. On review Wikipediaalso cites Hughes speculation.
Certainly the cunning punning has some basis in fact too as this cite discusses:
That was an era filled with cunt puns, not the least of which was Shakespeare’s bit in Twelth Night (Also courtesy of An Underground Education.)
Of course there were no Capital P’s in the note - but clever Shakespeare - C, U, “n”, T makes P. Hardy har.
Anyway the word Earl was introduced sometime soon after the Norman Conquest and the word “cunt” is documented in use as of 1230 anyway. If the word was in obscene street use around the time of the rise of the use of the word “Earl” a hundred or so years earlier then it seems likely indeed that Hughes was right.
Reading your evidence carefully, there is absolutely no evidence that would support the assertion of Hughes. Unless he is in possession of some bit of evidence regarding contemporary usage and such, it’s nothing more than speculation. The fact that there is a close similarity is meaningless, except to those who see sexual references in every thing.
I find it entirely unlikely that the reason Duke cum King William didn’t call his new nobility “count” would have anything to do with the word “cunt.” First of all, a large chunk of the nobility William brought over was Norman, and the Normans would hardly object to being called “cunts.” Secondly, William as a Norman would be very unlikely to find the sensibilities of his new English subjects important on such a subject. Indeed, most of his English nobility, IIRC, quickly ended up speaking French anyway, at least at court. Thirdly, it’s much more likely, in my mind anyway, that William simply used the title that was already in place in his new country, much as he adopted other English institutions and customs which differed from the French/Norman way of ruling a country.
Speculation, in the absence of hard evidence, is nothing more than wishful thinking, either by Hughes or by me. To annoint such musings with any assertion of “likeliness” is meritless.
I think that indeed a ruling class, especially a new ruling class, would like to avoid being snickered at by the masses and there is at least evidence that the sense of humor common at the time was that anything near sound-alike to cunt evoked snickers. That is however is not hard evidence, granted.
Somewhat related - was there an extant OE/Danish word for wife of the earl/eorl/jarl?
Also I found this which is very interesting … go to pages 53 through 56 (if there is a way to cut and paste from Google books I know it not) even though the following pages - not part of the “preview” seem like they’d have the most meat. Ah well. The gist is that “Count” was used by William, his sons were all called counts for example, but that its meaning was a bit unclear. To argue against my previous source that confusion as to the title’s true significance may also have contributed to the use of earl, even in a new usage compared to previous earldoms. And if there was no word already in use for the wife of an earl then countess may have been brought over only to fill that void.
FWIW.
The wife of the earl in Saxon England is given the title Comtissa in Latin chronicles in Saxon England, but there wasn’t a word in Old English for it. The wife of an Earl was just a “Lady” So even before the Conquest, the wives of Earls were being called countesses (or a variant therefof) in Latin and French.
It’s not even soft evidence. It’s pure speculation, not much better than the fanciful etymology glurge that people pass around.
There is also this claim: