Online Etymology Dictionary

county: late 13c., from Anglo-Norm. counte, from L.L. comitatus "jurisdiction of a count," from L. comes (see count (n.)); replaced O.E. scir "shire."
Kilkenny: county in Leinster, Ireland. The county is named for its town, from Ir. Cill Chainnigh "Church of (St.) Kenneth." The story of the Kilkenny cats, a pair of which fought until only their tails were left, is attested from 1822.
Kentucky: U.S. state, earlier a county of Virginia, organized 1776; the name is of Iroquois or Shawnee origin, perhaps a Wyandot (Iroquoian) word meaning "meadow" (cf. Seneca geda'geh "at the field"); the river name seems to have been the original use in Eng.; the native use perhaps was first in ref. to a village in Clark County known in Shawnee as Eskippakithiki.
bourbon: type of American corn whiskey, 1846, from Bourbon County, Kentucky, where it first was made, supposedly in 1789. Bourbon County was organized 1785, one of the nine established by the Virginia legislature before Kentucky became a state. The name reflects the fondness felt in the United States for the French royal family, and especially Louis XVI, in gratitude for the essential support he had given to the rebel colonists.
Napa: California county, perhaps from a Southern Patwin (Wiuntun) word meaning "homeland."
Chappaquiddick: place in Dukes County, Mass., from a native New England Algonquian language, lit. "island adjacent to the mainland."
Devonian: 1837, as a geological era, from the English county of Devon, where the Old Red Sandstone formations of that age are prominent.
Antietam: place name, eastern U.S., from an Algonquian word perhaps meaning "swift water," occurring in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but the best-known is a creek near Sharpsburg in Washington County, Maryland, site of a bloody Civil War battle Sept. 17, 1862.
Angus: masc. proper name, from Scot., related to Ir. Aonghus, a compound that may be rendered in Eng. as "one choice." Also the name of a county in Scotland, hence a breed of cattle associated with that region (1842).
donnybrook: 1852, from Donnybrook Fair, proverbial for carousing and brawling, held in County Dublin until 1855.
palatinate: 1650s, from palatine; in England and Ireland, a county palatine; also used of certain American colonies (Carolina, Maryland, Maine).
Reading: county town of Berkshire, O.E. Readingum (c.900), "(Settlement of) the family or followers of a man called *Read."
Shenandoah: originally a place name in Dutchess County, N.Y., from Oneida (Iroquoian) family name Skenondoah, derived from oskenon:to "deer." Later transferred to river and valley in Virginia.
courthouse: late 15c., from court + house. In Virginia and the Upper South, it also can mean "county seat."
Devon: county name, O.E. Defena(scir), late 9c., "(territory of the) Dumnonii," a Celtic name.
township: O.E. tunscipe "inhabitants or population of a town." Applied in M.E. to "manor, parish, or other division of a hundred." Specific sense of "local division or district in a parish, each with a village or small town and its own church" is from 1540; as a local municipal division of a county in U.S. and Canada, first recorded 1685.
assize: c.1300 (attested from mid-12c. in Anglo-L.), from O.Fr. asise "session" (12c.), from fem. pp. of asseoir "to cause to sit," from L. assidere (see assess). Originally "all legal proceedings of the nature of inquests or recognitions;" hence sessions held periodically in each Eng. county to administer civil and criminal justice.
Lincoln: English city, county town of Lincolnshire, O.E. Lindcylene, from L. Lindum Colonia from a Latinized form of British *lindo "pool, lake" (corresponding to Welsh llyn). Originally a station for retired IX Legion veterans.
boycott: 1880, from Irish Land League ostracism of Capt. Charles C. Boycott (1832-1897), land agent of Lough-Mask in County Mayo, who refused to lower rents for his tenant farmers. Quickly adopted by newspapers in languages as far afield as Japanese (boikotto). The family name is from a place in England.
pixie: c.1630, perhaps from Swed. dialect pyske "small fairy," but West County origin suggests ultimate source in Cornwall and thus something Celtic. Earliest references were in pixy-path "bewilderment," lit. "path on which one is led astray by pixies," and pixie-led "lost."
Gloucester: English county, O.E. Gleawceaster, from L. Coloniae Glev (2c.), from Glevo, a Celtic name meaning "bright place" (perhaps influenced by O.E. gleaw "wise, prudent") + O.E. ceaster "Roman town."
ballyhoo: "publicity, hype," 1908, from circus slang, "a short sample of a sideshow" (1901), of unknown origin. There is a village of Ballyhooly in County Cork, Ireland. In nautical lingo, ballahou or ballahoo (1867, perhaps 1836) meant "an ungainly vessel," from Sp. balahu "schooner."
Hampshire: reduced from O.E. Hamtunscir; named for the city of Southampton, which originally was simply Hamtun. Norman scribes mangled the county name to Hauntunescire, later Hantescire, hence the abbrev. Hants.
gerrymander: 1812, Amer.Eng., from Elbridge Gerry + (sala)mander. Gerry, governor of Massachusetts, was lampooned when his party redistricted the state in a blatant bid to preserve an Antifederalist majority. One Essex County district resembled a salamander, and a newspaper editor dubbed it Gerrymander.
Stafford: town in England, mid-11c., Stæfford, lit. "Ford by a landing-place," from O.E. stæð + ford. County town of Staffordshire, which, as a name for a type of earthenware and porcelain made there is attested from 1765.
Mormon: 1830, coined by religion founder Joseph Smith (1805-1844) in Seneca County, N.Y., in allusion to Mormon, supposed prophet and author of "The Book of Mormon," explained by Smith as meaning more mon, from Eng. more + Egyptian mon "good."
Tyrone: Ir. county, from Ir. Tir Eoghain "Eoghan's Land," from Eoghan "Owen," ancestor of the O'Neills, who owned land here. Tir also forms the final syllable in Leinster, Munster, Ulster.
Conestoga: 1699, name of an Indian tribe in southcentral Pennsylvania, probably from some Iroquoian language and sometimes said to mean "people of the cabin pole;" later a place in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where a characteristic type of covered wagon was built. Conestoga wagon is from 1750 (about three years before the last of the Conestoga Indians were massacred), but it was already an established term as the first reference is to the name of a Philadelphia tavern. Also a breed of horses (1824) and a type of boot and cigar (see stogie).
Chesterfield: Derbyshire town, O.E. Cesterfelda, lit. "open land near a Roman fort," from ceaster "fort" + feld "open land." The cigarette brand was named for Chesterfield County, Virginia, U.S.
shire: O.E. scir "administrative office or district," from P.Gmc. *skizo (cf. O.H.G. scira "care, official charge"). Ousted since 14c. by Anglo-Fr. county (q.v.). The gentrified sense is from The Shires (1796), used by people in other parts of England of those counties that end in -shire; sense transferred to the hunting country of the Midlands (1860).
piker: "miserly person," 1872, formerly "poor migrant to California" (1860), earlier pike (1854), perhaps originally "vagrant who wanders the pike (1)" (which is the notion in Sussex dial. piker "vagrant, tramp, gypsy," 1838), but Barnhart and others say the Amer.Eng. word ultimately is a reference to people from Pike County, Missouri.
claddagh: in Claddagh ring (Ir. fáinne Chladach), from village of Claddagh, County Gallway. The village name is lit. "stony beach."
bunk (2): "nonsense," 1900, short for bunkum, phonetic spelling of Buncombe, a county in North Carolina. The usual story of its origin is this: At the close of the protracted Missouri statehood debates, on Feb. 25, 1820, N.C. Representative Felix Walker began what promised to be a "long, dull, irrelevant speech," and he resisted calls to cut it short by saying he was bound to say something that could appear in the newspapers in the home district and prove he was on the job. "I shall not be speaking to the House," he confessed, "but to Buncombe." Bunkum has been Amer.Eng. slang for "nonsense" since 1847.
limerick: nonsense verse of five lines, 1896, perhaps from the county and city in Ireland, but if so the connection is obscure. It is usually attributed to a party game in which each guest in turn made up a nonsense verse and all sang a refrain with the line "Will you come up to Limerick?" Or perhaps from Learic, from Edward Lear (1812-88) English humorist who popularized the form. Earliest examples are in French, which further complicates the quest for the origin. First record of the word is in a letter of Aubrey Beardsley. The place name is lit. "bare ground," from Ir. Liumneach, from lom "bare, thin."
regulate: c.1630, from L.L. regulatus, pp. of regulare "to control by rule, direct" (5c.), from L. regula "rule" (see regular). Regulation is first recorded 1672, "act of regulating;" sense of "rule for management" is first attested 1715. Regulator is first recorded 1655; in Eng. history, with a capital R-, "member of a commission appointed in 1687 to manage county elections." In U.S. history, applied to local posses that kept order (or disturbed it) in rural regions c.1767-71. Meaning "clock by which other timepieces are set" is attested from 1758.
sheriff: late O.E. scirgerefa "representative of royal authority in a shire," from scir (see shire) + gerefa "chief, official, reeve" (see reeve). In Anglo-Saxon England, the representative of royal authority in a shire. As an American county official, attested from 1662; sheriff's sale first recorded 1798.
liberty: late 14c., from O.Fr. liberté "freedom," from L. libertatem (nom. libertas) "freedom, condition of a freeman," from liber "free" (see liberal)
"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right." [Learned Hand, 1944]
Nautical sense of "leave of absence" is from 1758. To take liberties "go beyond the bounds of propriety" is from 1625. Sense of "privileges" led to sense of "a person's private land" (mid-15c.), which yielded sense in 18c. England and America of "a district within a county but having its own justice of the peace," and also "a district adjacent to a city and in some degree under its municipal jurisdiction" (e.g. Northern Liberties of Philadelphia).
hundred: O.E. hundred "a counting of 100," from W.Gmc. *khundrath (cf. O.N. hundrað, Ger. hundert), first element is P.Gmc. *hunda- "hundred" (cf. Goth. hund, O.H.G. hunt), from PIE *kmtom "hundred" (cf. Skt. satam, Avestan satem, Gk. hekaton, L. centum, Lith. simtas, O.Ir. cet, Bret. kant "hundred"). Second element is P.Gmc. *rath "reckoning, number" (cf. Goth. raþjo "a reckoning, account, number," garaþjan "to count"). O.E. also used simple hund, as well as hund-teontig. Meaning "division of a county or shire with its own court" (still in some British place names and U.S. state of Delaware) was in O.E. and probably represents 100 hides of land. The Hundred Years War (which ran intermittently from 1337 to 1453) was first so called in 1874.
Wyoming: region in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from Munsee Delaware (Algonquian) chwewamink "at the big river flat," from /xw-/ "big" + /-e:wam-/ "river flat" + /-enk/ "place." Popularized by 1809 poem "Gertrude of Wyoming," set amid wars between Indians and American settlers, by Scottish author Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), who seems to have had a vague or defective notion of Pennsylvania geography. Subsequently applied 19c. to other locations, including a western territory organized July 25, 1868 (admitted as a state 1890); also used in Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
"On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall,
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring,
Of what thy gentle people did befall;
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.
Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore!"
[Campbell, "Gertrude of Wyoming," 1809]
borough: O.E. burg, burh "fortified place, walled town, dwelling or dwellings within a fortified enclosure," from P.Gmc. *burgs "hill fort, fortress" (cf. O.Fris. burg "castle," O.N. borg "wall, castle," O.H.G. burg, buruc "fortified place, citadel," Ger. Burg "castle," Goth. baurgs "city"), from PIE *bhrgh "high," with derivatives referring to hills, hill forts, fortified elevations (cf. O.E. beorg "hill," Welsh bera "stack, pyramid," Skt. bhrant-, Avestan brzant- "high," Gk. Pergamos, name of the citadel of Troy). In Ger. and O.N., chiefly as "fortress, castle;" in Goth. "town, civic community." Meaning shifted M.E. from "fortress," to "fortified town," to simply "town" (especially one possessing municipal organization or sending representatives to Parliament). In U.S. (originally Pennsylvania, 1718) often an incorporated town; in Alaska, however, it is the equivalent of a county. The Scot. form is burgh. The O.E. dative singular byrig is found in many place names as -bury.
Shrewsbury: has one of the most complex developments of English place names and illustrates the changes wrought in Old English words by Anglo-Norman scribes who could not pronounce them. Recorded 1016 as Scrobbesbyrig, it originally may have meant "the fortified place in (a district called) The Scrub." The initial consonant cluster was impossible for the scribes, who simplified it to sr-, then added a vowel to make it easier still. The name was also changed by Anglo-Norman loss or metathesis of liquids in words containing -l-, -n-, or -r- (also evident in the derivatives of O.Fr. Berengier "bear-spear" -- O.H.G. Beringar -- name of one of the paladins in the Charlemagne romances and a common given name in England 12c. and 13c., which has come down in surnames as Berringer, Bellanger, Benger, etc.). Thus Sarop- became Salop- and in the 12c. and 13c. the overwhelming spelling in government records was Salopesberie, which accounts for the abbreviation Salop for the modern county. During all this, the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (as opposed to the French scribes) still pronounced it properly, and regular sound evolutions probably produced a pronunciation something like Shrobesbury (which turns up on a 1327 patent roll). After a predictable -b- to -v- (a vowel in the Middle Ages) to -u- shift, the modern spelling begins to emerge 14c. and is fully established 15c.