Branding
An order in council to incorporate any municipality must give the municipality an official name. Of Alberta's 64 municipal districts, 18 still have municipal district in their official names, while 46 of them have branded themselves as counties in their official names.
The use of the county term in the official names of 46 municipal districts (and two specialized municipalities) has partially led to a common belief that a county is its own separate municipal status type, which is not the case. The other major contributor to this common belief is that a county was once a former municipal status type in Alberta prior to the County Act being repealed in the mid-1990s. Those municipalities that were once officially incorporated as counties were continued under the Municipal Government Act (MGA) as municipal districts and were permitted to retain the term county in their official names.
Read more about this topic: List Of Municipal Districts In Alberta