While the transition from Somersetshire, England to Somerset is unclear, I used the end of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1801; anything post this is Somerset [ http://britishfolklore.com/somerset ] The British folklore and fairy stories associated with the neolithic and prehistoric sites across Britain shared the following: The name "Somersetshire" derives from Old English “Sumors?te”, which is short for “Sumort?ns?te”, meaning "the people living at or dependent upon modern Somerton" The first known use of the name is in the law code of King Ine (Saxon King of Wessex from 688 to 726) making Somerset along with Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset one of the oldest yet still extant units of local government in the world. An alternative suggestion is that the name derives from Seo-mere-saetan meaning "settlers by the sea lakes" The people of Somerset are first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's entry for AD 845, in the inflected form "Sumursætum," but the county is first mentioned in the entry for 1015 using the same name. The archaic county name Somersetshire is first mentioned in the Chronicle's entry for 878 Although "Somersetshire" had been in common use as an alternative name for the county, it went out of fashion in the late 19th century, and is no longer used. This is possibly due to the adoption of "Somerset" as the official name for the county through the establishment of the County Council in 1889. However, as with other counties not ending in "shire," this suffix was superfluous, as there was no need to differentiate between the county and a town within it