They were created by the historian, Dr. Colin R Chapman, in the late 1970s, and as intended, provide a widely used shorthand in genealogy which follows the common practice of describing areas in terms of the counties existing in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Chapman codes have no mapping, postal or administrative use. They can however be useful for disambiguation by postal services where a full county name or traditional abbreviation is not supplied after a place name which has more than one occurrence, a particular problem where these are post towns such as Richmond.

Historic counties edit

Administrative areas edit

Historic counties edit

1975–1996 regions edit

Historic counties edit

1974–1996 edit

• Historic counties of England
• Historic counties of Scotland
• Historic counties of Wales
• Counties of Northern Ireland

• The Chapman County Code for British Isles Counties, Lochin Publishing, accessed 13 October 2019