On 26/12/2013 3:02 AM, Gavin Bell wrote: "Aberdeen" is the city, the wider county is "Aberdeenshire". I have the counties of Ross and Inverness further up the tree of my Aberdeenshire ancestors. Is the correct way to punctuate their names to insert a hyphen: Inverness-shire ? That's the way I've usually found it, but occasionally I see the snakelike Invernessshire, and a few writers have waffled and use "the county of Inverness". Is their any reason other than traditional usage for Scottish counties to almost always include the "shire" syllable, whereas the English counties vary widely? Always Yorkshire, for example, but never Cornwallshire -- and then there are off and on ones like Devon/Devonshire. Margaret Gibbs To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message