Hundred (division)

A hundred is a geographic division formerly used in England, Wales, Denmark, South Australia, some parts of the United States, Germany (Southern Schleswig), Sweden, Finland and Norway, which historically was used to divide a larger region into smaller administrative divisions.

Alternative names include wapentake (Old Norse), herred (Danish, Norwegian bokmål), herad (Norwegian nynorsk), härad (Swedish), harde (German) and kihlakunta (Finnish).

The name "hundred" is derived from the number "one hundred". It may once have referred to an area liable to provide for a hundred men under arms, or containing roughly a hundred homesteads. It was a traditional Germanic system described as early as AD 98 by (the centeni). Similar systems were used in the traditional administrative regimes of China and Japan.