Our riding?
Why "riding"? Why not electoral district, like they use in the United States?
A definition from about.com:
In Canada, a riding is a place or geographical area that is represented in the House of Commons by a member of parliament, or in provincial and territory elections an area represented by a member of the provincial or territory legislative assembly.
So? That still doesn't answer the question. I asked why, not what.
To find out why, we have to travel back, say 1000 years, to the age of Viking invasions along the Eastern coast of England. In between all their raping and pillaging, they managed to leave behind some vocabulary that worked its way into the common spoken vocabulary of the Britons.
So what is a riding? Is that the distance a person could "ride" in day? Is that it?
No. Wait for it.
The Vikings left us a word in old Norse:
þriðjungr.
Thridjungr means "a third part".
In 866 CE, the Vikings captured York and established a kingdom there, adopting the traditional county divisions of North, East and West.*
Thus,
North thridjungr, East thridjungr, and West thridjungr.
Pardon my mix of languages, but that's how English goes sometimes.
By the time people were speaking what we call Middle English, the words had become
North thriding, East thriding, and West thriding.
North triding, East triding, and West triding.
Then with the assimilation of the final t or th sounds in North, East and West with the initial t sounds in triding, we got
North triding, East triding, and West triding
or
North riding, East riding, and West riding.
And no riding of animals or vehicles was involved.
Future administrative divisions were also called "ridings," and this term came with the English colonial government in Canada. On ships. That's sailing, not riding.
And here riding remains, not riding anywhere, not related to a division of thirds, but resting in the etymological sediment of English History.
* The map depicted above is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England and Wales License.
Future administrative divisions were also called "ridings," and this term came with the English colonial government in Canada. On ships. That's sailing, not riding.
And here riding remains, not riding anywhere, not related to a division of thirds, but resting in the etymological sediment of English History.
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