Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The départements (or departments) are administrative units of France, roughly analogous to British counties and now grouped into 22 metropolitan and four overseas régionss. They are subdivided into 342 arrondissements. Départements are also found in Côte d'Ivoire.
Administrative role
Each département is administered by a Conseil Général elected for six years, and by a préfet appointed by the French government and assisted by one or more sous-préfets based in district centres outside the departmental capital. An administrative reform in 1982 transferred some of the préfet's powers to the president of the Conseil Général.
The capital city of a département bears the title of préfecture. Départements are divided into one to five arrondissements. The capital city of an arrondissement is called the sous-préfecture. The civil servant in charge is the sous-préfet.
The départements sub-divide into communes, governed by municipal councils. France (as of 1999) had 36,779 communes.
Most of the départements have an area of around 4,000-8,000 km² and a population between 250,000 and a million. The largest in terms of area is Gironde (10,000 km²) and the smallest the city of Paris (105 km² excluding the suburbs, now organised in adjacent départements). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous Lozère (74,000).
The départements are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes and on car number-plates. Note that there is no number 20, but 2A and 2B instead. Note also that the two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco. Together with the ISO 3166-1 country code FR the numbers form the ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitain departments. The overseas departments get two letters for the ISO 3166-2 code.
French régions and départements
Number Département Préfecture
01 Ain Bourg-en-Bresse 02 Aisne Laon 03 Allier Moulins 04 Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Digne 05 Hautes-Alpes Gap 06 Alpes-Maritimes Nice 07 Ardèche Privas 08 Ardennes Charleville-Mézières 09 Ariège Foix 10 Aube Troyes 11 Aude Carcassonne 12 Aveyron Rodez 13 Bouches-du-Rhône Marseille 14 Calvados Caen 15 Cantal Aurillac 16 Charente Angoulême 17 Charente-Maritime La Rochelle 18 Cher Bourges 19 Corrèze Tulle 2A Corse-du-Sud Ajaccio 2B Haute-Corse Bastia 21 Côte-d'Or Dijon 22 Côtes-d'Armor Saint-Brieuc 23 Creuse Guéret 24 Dordogne Périgueux 25 Doubs Besançon 26 Drôme Valence 27 Eure Evreux 28 Eure-et-Loir Chartres 29 Finistère Quimper 30 Gard Nîmes 31 Haute-Garonne Toulouse 32 Gers Auch 33 Gironde Bordeaux 34 Hérault Montpellier 35 Ille-et-Vilaine Rennes 36 Indre Châteauroux 37 Indre-et-Loire Tours 38 Isère Grenoble 39 Jura Lons-le-Saunier 40 Landes Mont-de-Marsan 41 Loir-et-Cher Blois 42 Loire Saint-Etienne 43 Haute-Loire Le Puy 44 Loire-Atlantique Nantes 45 Loiret Orléans 46 Lot Cahors 47 Lot-et-Garonne Agen 48 Lozère Mende 49 Maine-et-Loire Angers 50 Manche Saint-Lô 51 Marne Châlons-en-Champagne 52 Haute-Marne Chaumont 53 Mayenne Laval 54 Meurthe-et-Moselle Nancy 55 Meuse Bar-le-Duc 56 Morbihan Vannes 57 Moselle Metz 58 Nièvre Nevers 59 Nord Lille 60 Oise Beauvais 61 Orne Alençon 62 Pas-de-Calais Arras 63 Puy-de-Dôme Clermont-Ferrand 64 Pyrénées-Atlantiques Pau 65 Hautes-Pyrénées Tarbes 66 Pyrénées-Orientales Perpignan 67 Bas-Rhin Strasbourg 68 Haut-Rhin Colmar 69 Rhône Lyon 70 Haute-Saône Vesoul 71 Saône-et-Loire Mâcon 72 Sarthe Le Mans 73 Savoie Chambéry 74 Haute-Savoie Annecy 75 Paris Paris 76 Seine-Maritime Rouen 77 Seine-et-Marne Melun 78 Yvelines Versailles 79 Deux-Sèvres Niort 80 Somme Amiens 81 Tarn Albi 82 Tarn-et-Garonne Montauban 83 Var Toulon 84 Vaucluse Avignon 85 Vendée La Roche-sur-Yon 86 Vienne Poitiers 87 Haute-Vienne Limoges 88 Vosges Epinal 89 Yonne Auxerre 90 Territoire-de-Belfort Belfort 91 Essonne Evry 92 Hauts-de-Seine Nanterre 93 Seine-Saint-Denis Bobigny 94 Val-de-Marne Créteil 95 Val-d'Oise Pontoise 971 Guadeloupe 1 Basse-Terre 972 Martinique 1 Fort-de-France 973 Guyane 1 Cayenne 974 La Réunion 1 Saint-Denis The following are not départments
(see notes):986 Wallis and Futuna 2 Mata-Utu 987 French Polynesia2 Papeete 975 Saint Pierre and Miquelon3 Saint Pierre 976 Mayotte3 Mamoutzou 988 New Caledonia 3 Noumea Notes:
Finally, France maintains control over a number of small islands in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
- The overseas departments are former colonies outside France that now enjoy a status similar to European or metropolitan France. They are part of France and of the EU. Each of them constitutes a région at the same time.
- Beyond these there are also three "overseas territories" (French: territoires d'outre-mer, or TOM) that are part of France but not of the EU. They are: French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and the French Southern and Antarctic Territories.
- Furthermore there are three separate special status territories (French: collectivites territorialles), also part of France but not of the EU: Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Mayotte and New Caledonia. New Caledonia used to be a TOM.
Former départements
(incomplete list)
- Seine
- Seine-et-Oise
- French départements in the Netherlands
- French départements in Algeria
- 91 Algiers
- 92 Oran
- 93 Constantine
- The 130 départements of the Napoleonic Empire
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Département."
Crosswords: DÉPARTEMENT |
| Non-English Usage: "DÉPARTEMENT" is also a word in the following language with English translations in parentheses. French (agency, branch, bureau, county, department, desk, division, service). |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
83 département | 8 |
06 département | 6 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-e-e-é-m-n-p-r-t-t" | |
-1 letter: department. | |
-2 letters: patterned. | |
-3 letters: attemper, attender, dampener, mattered, nattered, parented, patented, pattered, permeant, rattened, tampered. | |
-4 letters: adepter, amender, dentate, entreat, meander, pattern, predate, premade, prename, pretend, ratteen, reedman, remated, renamed, reptant, retaped, tapered, tempera, tempted, tempter, ternate, tramped, treated. | |
-5 letters: ampere, anteed, ardent, arpent, attend, damner, dampen, damper, demean, dement, depart, deperm, derate, detent, dreamt. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)44 C9 50 41 52 54 45 4D 45 4E 54 |
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000100 01010000 01000001 01010010 01010100 01000101 01001101 01000101 01001110 01010100 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)D É P A R T E M E N T |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0044 00C9 0050 0041 0052 0054 0045 004D 0045 004E 0054 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)38171503552543947394854 |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
