Lib Dems gain Dacorum, but where is it and why is it called that?

Dacorum local election 2023 results in full as Liberal Democrats earn majority with six seats gained while Tories fall

says the headline.

Below it is a picture of Ed Davey driving a tractor and demolishing a blue wall of straw bales. Let no one tell you that our now-traditional cheesy media stunts don't work.

But the headline also invites two questions; where is Dacorum and why is it called that?

Those of you who follow the minutiae of Lib Dem campaigning will remember that Ed's stunt was filmed in Berkhamsted. So Dacorum is in West Hertfordshire.

And one answer to the question of why this district council is called Dacorum is: "So that people in Berkhamsted don't have to say they're from Hemel Hempstead." Because Hemel Hempstead is by far the largest town in the district, but for some reason has not lent its name to it.

Though I lived in Hemel as a boy, I've always assumed that Dacorum was a name made up during Edward Heath's reorganisation of local government. 

In fact, it's the name of the hundred covering the west of the county - it's much larger than today's Dacorum District Council. 

Flags of the World says that at the time of the Domesday Book there were two hundreds here: Danais and Tring. They were merged (presumably by an ancestor of Heath's) and the name Hundred of Dacorum was first recorded in 1196.

As to that name, the same site says:

The name Dacorum is thought to mean the 'Hundred of the Dacians' in Medieval Latin. Daci was mistakenly used for 'Danes' in the Middle Ages. According to legend certain tribes from Dacia migrated first to Denmark, then to Angleland in the 9th and 10th centuries. 

And Dacia, says Wikipedia, roughly corresponds to the present-day countries of Romania, as well as parts of Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

Well, you did ask.

Returning to more local matters, I'm pleased to see that the Lib Dems hold Boxmoor, where I spent the brief middle-class period of my childhood. Warners End and Chaulden, the ward we lived in before that, remains Conservative.