Fun Fact of the Day: The Neat Story Behind the Word “Sheriff”

As should be pretty clear, I love the history of words and the stories they tell. I think it is amazing that a history can be gleaned from an assortment of letters that created a word.

In the Middle Ages, the English did not call their districts “counties,” they were called “shires.”

In fact it should be no surprise that Tolkien, as professor of Anglo Saxon literature, borrowed very heavily from his knowledge of medieval England to create his fantasy world.

In each shire, there was an official, called a “reeve” who acted as the area’s chief magistrate, under the direct authority of the king.  While initially the reeve was mostly an administrative position, as time went on, more emphasis was put on the reeve’s duty of enforcing the king’s law.

If a law was broken, the matter would be taken to the “Shire’s reeve.”

Over time “Shire reeve” got contracted into “Sheriff.”

And just as an added neat fact: In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the storytellers is in fact a Reeve!

Sort of random, but also kind of cool!