County Cork tartans and Arsenal tartan

[thanmuwa]

It was our general opinion at the time that the government chose to call these administrative districts "counties" because there was no other, suitable, administrative term that the Civil Servants in charge of carrying out the provisions of LGA 1991 could use. The LGA 1991 was a fairly complicated bit of legislation, and took until 1993 to enact.

I am intrigued by this mysterious "our". What group is it you are talking about? I have visions of some secret Dan-Brown-esque group with cowls and the whole works .

Also, why not call them counties? Drawing up of the original county borders and calling them counties was an artificial process decided by a government, albeit many centuries ago. Surely it is the same process as redrawing county boundaries and renaming counties, just seperated in time (and this time by a democratically elected government)? Why would one be legitimate and not the other?
It is not as if there is a great big line imprinted in the earth seperating all the counties. The only political boundaries that make much sense to me are ones with a clear geographical division eg Connacht (and Roscommon) from Leinster (and Westmeath) by the Shannon at Athlone. A boundary that is solely a line on a map is a mere whimsy, a product of the imagination of Mankind, to be played with as such .

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

I am intrigued by this mysterious "our". What group is it you are talking about? I have visions of some secret Dan-Brown-esque group with cowls and the whole works .

You are not far off the mark! For several years I worked in one of the departments of the Ministry of Arts, Culture, the Gaeltacht, and Islands (the waste basket of government as I used to term it-- whenever the Department of the Taoisceach didn't know what to do with something, they dumped it on us; hence the sobriquet).