Ask the Forum thread- psephology

[andrewteale]

The old Church ward in Bury was originally the town centre. When Bury expanded west of the Irwell Church ward was expanded to cover that area, and subsequently boundary changes removed the town centre. The name Church ward was kept until 2023 despite the ward not having contained the original church for decades.

[islington]

Runnymede district, in Surrey, is south of the Thames; but the eponymous location, where Magna Carta was signed, was north of the river.

[carolus]

Neath East?

[islington]

In eastern Europe, the names of Romania and Rumelia (the latter an old term for Ottoman territories in Europe) are both ultimately derived from the city of Rome, which of course neither of them remotely contains.

Also, Romagna, a region of Italy, is at least in the right country but is nowhere near including the city of Rome from which its name ultimately derives.

[johnloony]

There is a Galicia in Spain and a Galicia in /near Poland, so one of them must be named after the wrong place.

[YL]

Apr 29, 2024 7:49:56 GMT batman said:

Isn't India named ultimately after the river Indus, which is mostly no longer in India?

And then there's Indiana.

[finsobruce]

Apr 29, 2024 8:24:13 GMT YL said:

Apr 29, 2024 7:49:56 GMT batman said:

Isn't India named ultimately after the river Indus, which is mostly no longer in India?

And then there's Indiana.

We can't go back there.

[The Bishop]

Apr 29, 2024 7:49:56 GMT batman said:

Isn't India named ultimately after the river Indus, which is mostly no longer in India?

Indeed, that is a key reason why Hindu "nationalist" types prefer Bharat.

[bjornhattan]

Based on name alone, you'd probably expect Northern Ireland to include Malin Head.

[polupolu]

Apr 29, 2024 8:24:10 GMT johnloony said:

There is a Galicia in Spain and a Galicia in /near Poland, so one of them must be named after the wrong place.

Apparently Galicia in Spain comes from the Roman name for the Celtic tribe of the region.

The other Galicia derives from the city of Halich (Га́лич - Cyrillic gamma being pronounced as an h sound in modern Ukranian).  Halich was the capital of the kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia

So they are unrelated, and both sources are in their relevant areas.

[manchesterman]

Apr 29, 2024 7:46:58 GMT islington said:

The department of Var in the south of France is named after a river that, since boundary changes in 1860, is no longer in the department.

Correct. Boundary changes have moved VAR to Stockley Park

[Peter Wilkinson]

Liechtenstein Castle, of course, is on the southern outskirts of Vienna. The castle passed out of the family as dowry for a daughter sometime in the 13th century, by which time they had started amassing the large estates in Bohemia which would be their main possessions for the next 700 years. They bought the County of Vaduz in 1712, its main attraction being that as it was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire directly rather than indirectly as part of the Habsburg dynastic lands, it entitled them to the privileges of "sovereign" imperial princes, at which point the Habsburg emperor created them Princes of Liechtenstein, the principality being named after the castle they had not owned for several centuries but consisting of properties which they had only just bought.

Habsburg, of course, is in northern Switzerland - though that always remained just the family name rather than one of some incongruous territory or other.

However, several former Habsburg territories do indeed not now contain the places after which they are named. For instance, Tirol is a village in northern Italy, near Bolzano, and Styria is a Latinisation of the German Steiermark - translated into English, the March of Steyr, which happens to be a town in Upper Austria.

To be fair, of the places after which the Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was named, one did happen to be within the said kingdom, although almost anybody could be forgiven for not realising the fact - because the Habsburgs had inherited their claim to the title as Kings of Hungary (which had held the rather evanescent kingdom then based on the two places for about 20 years in the 13th century), but on seizing what is now (as already mentioned in this thread) the western Ukrainian town of Halych during the First Partition of Poland, applied the full title to a territory that only partly overlapped with the former kingdom and attached it to the Austrian rather than the Hungarian part of their possessions. The Lodomeria part of the title, however, came from a town which remained in Poland until the Third Partition and was then seized by Russia (and was therefore outside the Habsburg kingdom) - Volodymyr, now also in western Ukraine (and very much not to be confused with the town of Vladimir, about 100 miles east of Moscow, even though the difference between their names is purely linguistic - somewhat curiously, western Ukraine and that part of Russia seem to have quite a number of placename pairs like this, quite apart from the first names of their presidents).

[wysall]

Syria.

[therealriga]

The Northern Ireland parliament constituency of Belfast St Anne's didn't include the St Anne's cathedral.

Most of the Shankill district was in Belfast Woodvale. Half of the Woodvale district was in Belfast Shankill.

[batman]

There are many such examples. Until a few years ago, Hounslow West ward didn't include Hounslow West tube station but did include most of Hounslow Heath, whereas Hounslow Heath ward didn't include any part of the heath but did include Hounslow West tube station. This anomaly has since been ended.

[johnloony]

Apr 29, 2024 7:09:06 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

I noted this morning that the Dutch province of Gelderland is named after the town of Geldern, which is in Germany and has not been part of Gelderland since 1712.

Further south you have the Belgian province of Luxembourg which does not contain the city of Luxembourg nor most of what was historically Luxembourg.

Are there any other good examples of jurisdictions/regions/municipalities named for a place that isn't in it?

Neath East doesn’t include any bits of the eastern part of Neath
Liverpool Scotland constituency didn’t include any of Scotland
The Sheffield Wednesday by-election was held on a Thursday
The Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre doesn’t have the body of Harold Holt in the pool

[mrtoad]

Apr 29, 2024 7:09:06 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

I noted this morning that the Dutch province of Gelderland is named after the town of Geldern, which is in Germany and has not been part of Gelderland since 1712.

Further south you have the Belgian province of Luxembourg which does not contain the city of Luxembourg nor most of what was historically Luxembourg.

Are there any other good examples of jurisdictions/regions/municipalities named for a place that isn't in it?

The Lubusz voivodeship of Poland is named for the town of Lebus which is in Germany. The link is that the region was, back along, the 'Lebus Land' of Brandenburg. The section east of the Oder/ Odra became part of Poland in 1945 but Lebus itself was west of the Oder and remained in (East) German Brandenburg. The bridge across the Oder at Lebus was destroyed in 1945 and has not been rebuilt, so to get between the two requires going via Frankfurt an der Oder or Kostrzyn, each several km away along the river. The city of Lebus is rendered as 'Lubusz' in Polish, which has potential for confusion.

[nyx]

A theoretical question that has just come to my mind: If someone dies around polling day, at what point does the vote become invalid? For example, if Person A appoints Person B to cast a proxy vote for them, and Person A dies on the morning of the day of the election, is the vote considered valid or not? I imagine this could actually occasionally be relevant in the event of a very narrow election.

[johnloony]

May 2, 2024 16:15:43 GMT nyx said:

A theoretical question that has just come to my mind: If someone dies around polling day, at what point does the vote become invalid? For example, if Person A appoints Person B to cast a proxy vote for them, and Person A dies on the morning of the day of the election, is the vote considered valid or not? I imagine this could actually occasionally be relevant in the event of a very narrow election.

My guess is that the proxy voter is allowed to vote on behalf of the dead voter up to the point at which the Returning Officer is officially notified of the death of the dead voter, and the electoral register updated accordingly.

[No Offence Alan]

I have checked the May 2nd 2024 local election results in 22 councils.
I found a "no description" candidate in Dorset and a Communist in St Albans, both with just 17 votes.
Anyone found a candidate with fewer votes?