There are 41 județe in Romania, divided into municipii (municipalities), orașe (cities) and comune (communes).
The capital, Bucharest, is not a județ, but a special municipality with identical functions, which also acts as the county seat of Ilfov.
In the Romanian Principalities, the județ was an office with administrative and judicial functions, corresponding to both judge and mayor.
The word is etymologically rooted in the Latin "judicium", and is therefore cognate to other administrative institutions like the Sardinian giudicati, or terms like jurisdiction and judge.
In Romanian, the term județ does not take an initial capital unless it is the first word of a sentence.