Romania Counties (original) (raw)

Buy data Donate

Updates:

Sorin Cosoveanu provided data from the 2011 census (source [10]).

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Number I-4 is dated 2002-12-10. It shows the new Ilfov county. FIPS Publication Change Notice No. 9, affecting FIPS PUB 10-4, issued on 2004-10-01, also shows the addition of Ilfov.

Change Notice 7 to FIPS PUB 10-4 is dated 2002-01-10. The only changes affecting Romania are the spelling changes of 1990.

Country overview:

In 1900, Romania was a young kingdom (since 1881). In comparison with today's map, it contained most of Moldova, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire owned Transylvania, which now forms its northwest section. It acquired additional territory, including Transylvania, during the Balkan Wars and World War I. World War II caused a net loss of territory, establishing the present-day boundaries.

Other names of country:

1. Danish: Rum�nien
2. Dutch: Roemeni�, Roemenie
3. English: Roumania (obsolete), Rumania (variant)
4. Finnish: Romania
5. French: Roumanie f
6. German: Rum�nien n
7. Icelandic: R�men�a
8. Italian: Romania f
9. Norwegian: Romania
10. Portuguese: Rom�nia, Rom�nia f (Brazil), Rum�nia (Brazil)
11. Romanian: Rom�nia
12. Russian: Румыния
13. Spanish: Ruman�a f, Rumania (variant)
14. Swedish: Rum�nien
15. Turkish: Romanya

Origin of name:

Roman + country suffix -ia, adopted in the 19th century to reflect political and linguistic heritage from Roman Empire

Primary subdivisions:

Romania is divided into 41 județe (sing. județ: counties) and one municipiu (city).

Postal codes:

Romania uses six-digit postal codes (Coduri postale). The first two digits identify the county.

Further subdivisions:

The third character (first digit) in a county's NUTS code represents the macroregion to which it belongs; the macroregions are simply called one, two, three, and four. The first four characters of the NUTS code represent a region. This table lists the level-4 NUTS codes and their regions.

The counties are divided into orașe (towns), municipii (municipalities), and comune (communes). In ~2002, there were 169 towns, 96 municipalities, and 2,686 communes.

Territorial extent:

Bucharest is surrounded by Ilfov.

The UN LOCODE page for Romania lists locations in the country, some of them with their latitudes and longitudes, some with their ISO 3166-2 codes for their subdivisions. This information can be put together to approximate the territorial extent of subdivisions.

Origins of names:

1. Banat: brief form of Banat of Temesvar; banat is a generic for the territory governed by a ban
2. Bistrița: Slavic for running brook
3. Brașov: Slavic for city of Braso (man's name)
4. Bucharest: attributed to founding by a shepherd named Bucur
5. Cluj: from Medieval Latin castrum clus: enclosed camp
6. Constanța: named for a sister of Roman emperor Constantine the Great
7. Galați: possibly from an early settlement of Galatians
8. Timișoara: Hungarian Temes: name of a county, var: fort

Change history:

1. 1900: Romania consisted of three provinces: Dobruja, Moldavia, and Wallachia. Wallachia was split by the Olt River into Little Wallachia (or Lesser Wallachia, or Oltenia, to the west) and Great Wallachia (or Greater Wallachia, or Muntenia). Provinces were further subdivided into districts or departments, as follows (using modern spelling where possible):

1. 1913-08-10: Southern Dobruja transferred from Bulgaria to Romania by the Treaty of Bucharest. This territory is now part of Razgrad and Varna regions in Bulgaria.
2. 1918-04-09: Romania annexed Bessarabia from Russia.
3. 1920-06-04: Treaty of Trianon redistributed more than half of Hungary's land. Romania received all of Transylvania, part of Banat, and Crișana-Maramureș. For details, see Hungary.
4. 1920-07-16: Bukovina transferred from Austria to Romania by the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Romania now contained nine provinces (Banat, Bessarabia, Bukovina, Crișana-Maramureș, Dobruja, Moldavia, Muntenia, Oltenia, and Transylvania), subdivided into about 76 counties or parts of counties.
5. 1925-06-14: Under law for administrative unification (Legea pentru unificarea administrativă), Romania was reorganized into 71 counties, which were further divided into 8,751 communes. The counties (source [1]) were:

1. (Note: the columns in the above table don't quite add up to the totals given. The discrepancy occurs in the source. Modern spellings are used.)
2. 1940-06: Northern Bukovina ceded to Soviet Union by treaty.
3. 1940-08-20: Northern Transylvania ceded to Hungary.
4. 1940-09-07: Southern Dobruja ceded to Bulgaria.
5. 1947-02-10: Transylvanian territory restored to Romania from Hungary. Bessarabia, which had changed hands repeatedly during World War II, formally restored to the U.S.S.R.
6. 1950: Romania reorganized into rayons (districts), with groups of districts designated as provinces.
7. 1950: Names of Brașov province and its capital changed to Stalin.
8. 1960: Names of Stalin province and its capital changed back to Brașov.
9. ~1960: Constanța town split from Dobrogea province. The resulting division was:

1. 1968-02-16: Romania reorganized. The 15 regions, one autonomous region, one regional town, and one republic town were abolished and replaced by 39 counties and the city of Bucharest.

1. ~1973: Capitals of Cluj and Mehedinți renamed Cluj-Napoca and Drobeta-Turnu Severin, respectively.
2. 1981-01-23: Călărași county formed from parts of Ialomița and Ilfov counties. Giurgiu county formed from parts of Ilfov and Teleorman counties. Remainder of Ilfov county annexed to Bucharest municipality. Before this change, Ilfov county's FIPS code was RO24.

1. 1990-02-22: In spelling reform, � changed to � in the names of two counties (D�mbovița, and V�lcea) and five capital cities (R�mnicu V�lcea, Sf�ntu Gheorghe, T�rgu Jiu, T�rgu Mureș, and T�rgoviște). Sectorul Agricol Ilfov (Ilfov Agricultural Sector) split from Bucharest municipality as a local government with county rank, but remained subordinate to Bucharest.
2. 1997-05-09: Ilfov county split from Bucharest municipality (former HASC code RO.BU) to resume full county rank. The ISO code for Bucharest did not change.
3. 2007-01-01: Romania joined the European Union.

Other names of subdivisions:

According to Wikipedia (source [4]), the Romanian Academy considers the letters ș and ț to be correct for writing Romanian, and not ş and ţ. The difference is whether the diacritical marks below the s and t are commas (correct) or cedillas (wrong). Apparently a lot of people are using cedillas.

Where the county name is the same as its capital, the German name of the capital (dating back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire) is given.

1. Bistrița: Bistritz (German)
2. Botoșani: Botoschani (German)
3. Brașov: Kronstadt (German); Stalin (obsolete)
4. Bucharest: Bucarest (French, Italian, Spanish); Bucareste (Portuguese); București (Romanian); Bukarest (Finnish, German, Swedish); Бухарест (Russian)
5. Bukovina: Bucovina (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish); Bucovine (French); Bukowina (German)
6. Călărași: Kalarasch (German)
7. Cluj: Klausenburg (German)
8. Constanța: Konstanza (German)
9. D�mbovița: D�mbovița (obsolete)
10. Dobruja: Dobrogea (Romanian); Dobroudja (French); Dobrudja (variant); Dobrudscha (German); Dobrugia (Italian)
11. Galați: Galatz (German)
12. Iași: Jassy (German)
13. Sibiu: Hermannstadt (German)
14. Transylvania: Siebenb�rgen (German); Transilvania (Italian, Spanish); Transilv�nia (Portuguese); Transylvanie (French)
15. Tulcea: Tultscha (German)
16. V�lcea: V�lcea (obsolete)
17. Wallachia: Valacchia (Italian); Valachie (French); Valaquia (Spanish); Val�quia (Portuguese); Walachei (German); Walachia (variant)

Population history:

Sources:

1. [1] Nistor, Ioan Silviu. Comuna Și Județul: Evoluția Istorică. Dacia, Cluj Napoca, 2000.
2. [2] Euroticket Company used to have postal code information (retrieved 2007-07-30).
3. [3] Institutul National de Statistica had data from censuses up to 2002 (http://www.insse.ro/RPL2002INS/vol5/tables/t01.pdf, dead link, retrieved 2005-07-26). Populations were corrected to reflect county boundaries as of 2002.
4. [4] Romanian alphabet Wikipedia article (retrieved 2011-06-20).
5. [5] Bennett, Robert, ed. "Territory and Administration in Europe." Pinter Publishers, London, New York, 1989.
6. [6] "Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States 1992." Europa Publications, London, 1992.
7. [7] "Anuarul Statistic al Republicii Socialiste Rom�nia 1981." Direcția Centrală de Statistică.
8. [8] Magocsi, Paul Robert. "Historical Atlas of Central Europe." University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002.
9. [9] 1979 Demographic Yearbook , 31st Ed. Statistical Office, United Nations, New York, 1980 (retrieved 2011-12-28).
10. [10] Recensăm�ntul Populației și al Locuințelor (2011 census). Institutul Național de Statistică (retrieved 2013-07-26).