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Translating Vordere Grafschaft and Hintere Grafschaft as the Front County and Rear County is not good English.
Vorpommern and Hinterpommern are traditionally named in English Hither Pomerania and Further Pomerania. The names make sense if you were a sailor coming from England since Vorpommern is nearer and Hinterpommern is farther away.
(Hither in this case means Nearer. I would not suggest using Hither since it no longer has currency as a geographic direction.)
I would recommend that the Vordere Grafschaft Sponheim be translated as the County of Nearer Sponheim and Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim as the County of Farther Sponheim. It makes more sense to me that the location be modified by the adjectives rather than County, since I do not know of a English usage which modifies County in this manner.
My problem is that, ultimately, I cannot determine from what point the Counts of Sponheim were measuring nearer and farther.
Lakaiser (talk) 02:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know it's a bit of a late response, but I always render them as the “Further” County of Sponheim and the “Hinder” County of Sponheim. The former at least has a precedent in "Further Austria".Kelisi (talk) 19:25, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]