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A governor is an official who heads the government of a colony, state or other sub-national state unit.Most countries in the world have some sort of official known as a governor, though in some countries, the heads of the states, provinces and regions may have a different title. This is particularly common in Europe, e.g. President of the Regional council in France, and minister-president in Germany. There are also different titles in Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium.
There can also be non-political governors: governors who simply govern an institution, such as a corporation or a bank. For example, in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries there are prison governors (" warden " in the United States), school governors and bank governors.
1 Rome
The English word "governor" derives from the LatinAlternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and ma word "gubernātor" (from which the adjective "gubernatorial" is taken). In ancient Rome, a governor was an official charged with the administration of a Roman provinceA Roman province (Latin, provincia was the largest territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's foreign possessions (beyond the Italian peninsula). The word province in modern English therefore has its origins in the term employed by the Roma. Often, a governor would have served as a consulFor modern diplomatic consuls see Consulate general. Consul (abbrev. was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. Under the Republic, the minimum age of election to consul for patricians was 40 years of a or a praetorAccording to Cicero, Praetor was a title which designated the consuls as the leaders of the armies of the state; and he considers the word to contain the same elemental parts as the verb praeire (praeeo: "to go before, to precede, to lead the way"). The p in Rome before being dispatched, but this was not always the case - less important provinces might be governed by a prefectThe word prefect can refer to any of a number of types of official, including: in Latin, praefectus a high-ranking military or civil official in the Roman Empire; the title now attaches to the heads of some departments of the Roman Curia, who are traditio, and (after the end of the Republic) provinces under direct control of the EmperorRoman Emperor is the title historians use to refer to the ruler of the Roman Empire. It was not actually used, and there was never actually any single office corresponding to it. Rather, the title "Roman Emperor" is a convenient shorthand for a complicate would be governed by a legateA legatus (often anglicized as "legate") was equivalent to a modern general officer in the Roman army. Being of senatorial rank, his immediate superior was the dux and he outranked all military tribunes. In order to command an army independently of the du. The main functions of a Roman governor were to collect taxes, supervise government expenditure, command the local military forces, and administer Roman lawRoman law is the legal system of both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, from its earliest days to the time of the Eastern Roman Empire, even to the time of the Emperor Justinian I after the fall of Rome itself. Roman law is the foundation of many l.
2 British Empire and Commonwealth
In the British Empire a governor was originally an official appointed by the British monarch to oversee one of his colonies. Because of the different constitutional histories of the various former colonies of the United Kingdom, the name now refers to officials with differing amounts of power.
Today crown colonies of the United Kingdom continue to be administered by a governor, who holds varying degrees of power. (Sovereign) Commonwealth Realms have Governors-General who represent the authority of the British Monarch.
See also:
