Of Divisions of Territories

[alice]

When you create a con-country, what terms come first to your mind to refer to its subdivisions? "Provinces"? "Counties"? "Shires"? Or maybe something a little more exotic like "oblasts"? For me it's "provinces", although I'm not sure why.

[dewrad]

Depends on the "feel" I want the country in question to have. I refer to the subdivisions of the Chadati commonwealth as "satrapies", because I want it to have a bit of a Persian feel. The divisions of the Tagorese sphere I label as "prefectures". So, it depends really...

[Pabappa]

I need more than one term. The Poswob state of Nama arose from the conquest of many tiny independent kingdoms, which were allowed to remain autonomous, paying taxes to the Poswob Empire and pledging military allegiance but otherwise retaining full control of their subjects with no interference from the imperial Poswob capital. So I call those petty kingdoms "counties" since the etymology of that English term is similar.

As I mentioned already, Nama is a state, albeit a state with only a shell government that handles taxation and military service only. The other states in the Poswob Empire have greater powers and the cities within those states have less control over their inhabitants.

I may want a term for the Poswob capital territory but for now I am just using its name, Blop.

That just leaves the distinction between the two types of states: ethnic and jurisdictional. The Poswob Empire is like Russia: it has an ethnic majority, the Poswob people, but they are only just barely a majority, and they have ethnic minorities living throughout the empire, some of which are historically mobile and thus distributed throughout many states, and others who have lived in geographically isolated habitats for thousands of years and have little presence outside their home states. I believe the Poswob distinction between ethnic states and jurisdictional states is much like the Russian distinction between oblasts and republics, but I dont feel comfortable using a Russian term in an English writeup, so I may end up arbitrarily borrowing another term like province, region, district, or prefecture ... or using two terms and then saying that both are also types of states.

[Imralu]

[...] but for now I am just using its name, Blop.

I actually laughed because that is so typical of you. Blop!

[mèþru]

For me the first word that comes to mind is "region" because it is vague
For one nation I'm starting to think I'll call different areas constituent countries like in the UK; although the countries are purely by geographic distance and culture with no political role.

[Curlyjimsam]

Many of the countries in my world have divisions I call "counties", reflecting the fact that they were originally personal fiefdoms of lords (or "counts"), and often still are. That said, I also have a tendency to use the native names as well, such as Viksen syiyn (if I remember correctly, this word was originally based on English "shire" when I first coined it over fifteen years ago).

"Province" for me connotes a larger region; the main place where I use it is to refer to the colonial jurisdictions of the ancient Naktic Empire. The smaller jurisdictions of the heart of the empire, the Nakta Valley itself, are called "counties".

I use "state" in one instance, to describe the eight semi-autonomous constituents of the Atlian Federation, each itself the size of a good-sized country and further subdivided into a large number of counties (which I suppose I might also called "prefectures" as each is governed by an elected official called a "prefect").

[alynnidalar]

This is an interesting question with regards to my main conworld, because it sort of doesn't apply. It's an urban fantasy setting, technically set in the "real" world with the supernatural dalar living scattered around in hidden "enclaves" connected by a network of portals, rather than contiguous territory. Enclaves range from about 1 km^2 to over 60 km^2, typically includes just one central settlement, and is likely hundreds or thousands of miles from any other enclave.

As a result, using the enclave as the smallest political division is obvious. The borders are easy to define, and the inhabitants of any given enclave will naturally feel a kinship to one another that they won't feel with people from another enclave, even if the other enclave is just a portal away. Enclaves may be organized in larger groups based on geographic proximity, which enclaves have portals to where, etc.; in Sanmra, I refer to these rather generically as "regions". I considered using state/province, but they just didn't seem to fit, because I associate them so strongly with a specific piece of land. I've toyed with some other words that are less directly tied to land... "polity", for example, or even "district"... but haven't settled on anything else yet. (More broadly, you could divide the Sanmran enclaves into "Asian" and "North American" based on geographic location, but that's not an actual political distinction, just an obvious practical one.)