[1][2] It was mentioned for the first time in the eighth century and was initially used by the South and West Slavs, denoting various territorial units of which the leader was the župan.
In modern Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, the term župa also refers to an ecclesiastical parish, while the related županija is used in Croatia and by Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina (as a synonym for kanton) for lower administrative subdivisions.
[5] Some Slavic nations changed its name into "opole", "okolina", "kraj" and "vierw", but it has survived in župan.
[7] However, Aleksander Brückner suggested the opposite evolution; župa as a back formation from title župan (for the etymology see corresponding article),[8] which is a borrowing from Iranian languages (*fsu-pāna, "shepherd").
German language translation of the word for those counties was komitat (from Latin comitatus, "countship") during the Middle Ages, but later it was gespanschaft (picking up the span root that previously came from župan).
The derivative titles were ispán, nominated by the king for not defined time, and gradually replaced by főispán in the 18-19th century; megyésispán, also nominated by the king but could be expelled anytime; alispán was the leader of the jurisdiction in the county if the 'megyésispán' was not available; várispán was more linked to the "vár" (fortress) in Hungary in the times of Árpád.
The Serbs in the Early Middle Ages were organized into župe, a confederation of village communities (roughly the equivalent of a county),[4] headed by a local župan (a magistrate or governor).
The ruling nobility possessed hereditary allodial estates, which were worked by dependent sebri, the equivalent of Greek paroikoi; peasants owing labour services, formally bound by decree.
[19] After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it was used as the official name of administrative units of Slovakia within Czechoslovakia in 1919 – 1928 and then again in the Slovak Republic during WWII in 1940–1945.
The name also survived in the clerical context, as parishes are called župnija (dual: župniji, plural: župnije).