Counties of Romania

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Updates: 

I found the postal codes for Romanian locations at the Euroticket Company  site.

I found a book by Ioan Silviu Nistor, "Comuna Și Județul: Evoluția Istorică", Dacia, Cluj Napoca, 2000. Among other information, it contained a table of the counties for the period 1925-1940, which I have added to the change history.

Roger Sperberg drew to my attention a source for the Romanian NUTS codes. While I was adding them, I also moved the ISO codes from the Change history to the Primary subdivisions section; and I changed certain character codes from the less-preferred to the more-preferred Unicode values (ş to ș and ţ to ț - from cedillas to commas below).

Martha, a correspondent, pointed out that the results of the 2002 census, and other data, have been made available on the Institutul National de Statistica  website.

FIPS Publication Change Notice No. 9, affecting FIPS PUB 10-4, was issued on 2004-10-01. It assigns a FIPS code to the new Ilfov department, as shown in the table below.

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Number I-4 is dated 2002-12-10. It shows one new department named Ilfov, with the code IF. The CIA World Factbook started listing Ilfov in about 2002. Ilfov is what used to be Bucharest county, minus the city of Bucharest, and forms a ring around the city. In "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries", I wrote that in ~1982, Ilfov county was split into Calarasi county, Giurgiu county, and a portion that was annexed to Bucharest municipality. I've tried to find out exactly when Ilfov county reappeared. My suspicion is that it's been there all along, but sometimes the standards and other documents list it separately from Bucharest, and sometimes combined.

Change Notice 7 to FIPS PUB 10-4 is dated 2002-01-10. The only changes affecting Romania are to the official spelling of two county names. Dîmbovița is changed to Dâmbovița, and Vîlcea to Vâlcea. Other sources indicate that the spelling of five capital cities has also changed. In Rîmnicu Vîlcea, Sfîntu Gheorghe, Tîrgu Jiu, Tîrgu Mureș, and Tîrgoviște, î has changed to â.

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: Rumænien
2. Dutch: Roemenië, Roemenie
3. English: Roumania (obsolete), Rumania (variant)
4. Finnish: Romania
5. French: Roumanie f
6. German: Rumänien n
7. Icelandic: Rúmenía
8. Italian: Romania f
9. Norwegian: Romania
10. Portuguese: Roménia, Romênia f (Brazil), Rumânia (Brazil)
11. Romanian: România
12. Spanish: Rumania f, Rumanía
13. Swedish: Rumänien

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.

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

Territorial extent: 

Bucharest is surrounded by Ilfov.

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 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 Russia.
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. 1968-01-14: Romania reorganized. The 15 regions, one autonomous region, one regional town, and one republic town were abolished and replaced by 38 counties and the city of Bucharest.
2. 1968-02-17: One additional county was created.
3. ~1982: Ilfov county (capital Bucharest, FIPS code RO24) split into Călărași county, Giurgiu county, and a portion that was annexed to Bucharest municipality. That resulted in the following division:

1. ~2000: In spelling reform, î changed to â in the names of two counties (Dâmbovița, and Vâlcea) and five capital cities (Râmnicu Vâlcea, Sfântu Gheorghe, Târgu Jiu, Târgu Mureș, and Târgoviște).
2. ~2001: Ilfov county split from Bucharest municipality (former HASC code RO.BU). The ISO code for Bucharest did not change.

Other names of subdivisions: 

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 (German, Swedish)
5. Bukovina: Bucovina (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish); Bucovine (French); Bukowina (German)
6. Călărași: Kalarasch (German)
7. Cluj: Klausenburg (German)
8. Constanța: Konstanza (German)
9. Dâmbovița: Dîmbovița (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: Siebenbürgen (German); Transilvania (Italian, Spanish); Transilvânia (Portuguese); Transylvanie (French)
15. Tulcea: Tultscha (German)
16. Vâlcea: Vîlcea (obsolete)
17. Wallachia: Valacchia (Italian); Valachie (French); Valaquia (Spanish); Valáquia (Portuguese); Walachei (German); Walachia (variant)

Population history:

Source: Institutul National de Statistica  of Romania. Corrected to reflect county boundaries as of 2002.