There’s an Essex, a Sussex, a Wessex, and a Middlesex, but no Nussex. Why?
I thought Wessex was a fictional county in some author’s work.
Probably for similar reasons that there is only Virginia and West Virginia, or that there is no West Carolina or East Carolina. Nobody set out to create a complete and matching set.
Thomas Hardy wrote about Wessex in this manner.
It still exists in relation to titles of Earls, Dukes etc.
It was a real Anglo-Saxon kingdom, of which there were more than just the ‘sexes’. This map might clarify things for the OP - there wasn’t a Nussex because Mercia was in the way.
Would you move to a town whose name sounded like ‘No-sex?’
There is. It’s called Norfolk though.
Isn’t that part of East Anglia? And north of Suffolk?
“…please, we’re British.”
And, just to clarify things still further, Mercia was not “Nussex” because it (along with East Anglia and Northumbria) was settled by the Angles, not the Saxons. The “-sex” ending meant “Saxon” and was only applied to areas settled by Saxons. The remaining English kingdom, Kent, was settled by the Jutes.
Quite correct - the kingdom of the East Angles was formed from two separate groups in the region, simply the North Folk and South Folk.
To complicate things still further, while I’m sure everyone already knows that there is a Saxony in Germany, there is also an Anglia–a small region at the base of the “neck” leading up to Denmark.
In German, though, it’s called Angeln
I always thought that there was a Nossex, but that they died out after the founding generation…
Funny. They didn’t look Jutish.
The title Earl of Wessex was revived for Prince Edward, though. Before that, Wessex meant either the ancient Anglo Saxon kingdom, or Thomas Hardy’s semi-imaginary region of southern England. It did not exist in any formal sense, and people still don’t say “we’re going to Wessex” or anything.
Don’t forget Jutland.