Essex qualifies as a world name. There are several very small towns named Essex in the USA and 3 towns there with Essex as part of their names (Essex Falls, Essex Junction, and Essexville). There are 5 US counties named Essex and 2 unfindable towns with this name on the island of Jamaica. The Essex in Great Britain is a county near London with almost 2 million people, and there’s a town named Essex in Ontario, Canada, with about 20,500 people.
The 18 towns named Essex in the USA are extremely small with 2 exceptions. Most of the US Essexes have the word unincorporated associated with their name. The largest Essex in the United States is the one in Maryland in Baltimore county. #2 is the one in Vermont with about 22,000 people, but then the population drops to about 6,700 in #3–Essex, CT. The largest of the 5 counties named Essex in the US is the one in New Jersey near Newark. It has a population of about 800,000.
Ninety miles south of Cuba, the Caribbean island of Jamaica reportedly has 2 villages named Essex, which is to be expected. The first visitors from England saw Jamaica in 1655, but it didn’t take control of the 3rd largest island in the Caribbean until a British colony was established there in 1707. The Brits brought salt cod, slavery, and names to Jamaica, and they stayed until 1962 when multi-cultural–African, Asian, European, and more–Jamaica became an independent nation that still has infrastructure challenges, good food, and reggae. The Earl of Essex was a well known title in England. One of the more famous earls with the Essex name was Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII.
However, the Essex name lives on chiefly because it derives from a reference to the word east and has been internationally used to name a record label, a pig species, some ship building seaports, a car engine, a type of barn, and more.
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