Northern Virginia (colloquially referred to as "NOVA") consists

of several counties and independent cities in the U.S. state of Virginia in a widespread region generally radiating southerly and westward from Washington, D.C. It is the most populous region of both Virginia and the Washington metropolitan area.American FactFinder

Communities in the region form the Virginia portion of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria DC-VA-MD-WV MSA and the larger Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia DC-MD-VA-WV CSA. Northern Virginia is the most diverse (in terms of both the number of ethnic groups and nationalities represented) and highest-income region of Virginia, having six of the twenty highest-income counties in the nation, including the two highest .

Northern Virginia's transportation infrastructure includes major airports Washington National and Dulles International, several lines of the Washington Metro subway system, the Virginia Railway Express suburban commuter rail system, transit bus services, and an extensive network of Interstate highways and expressways.

Notable features of the region include the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the many companies which serve them and the federal government. The area's attractions include various monuments and Colonial and Civil War-era sites such as Mount Vernon and Arlington National Cemetery. It is the most affluent region in the nation.

Source of the name

The name "Northern Virginia" does not seem to have been used in the early history of the area. According to Johnston, some early documents and land grants refer to the "Northern Neck of Virginia", and they describe an area which began on the east at the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and includes a territory that extended west, including all the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, with a western boundary called the Fairfax line. The Fairfax line, surveyed in 1746, ran from the first spring of the Potomac (still marked today by the Fairfax Stone) to the first spring of the Rappahannock, at the head of the Conway River. The Northern Neck was composed of 5,282,000 acres, and was larger in area than five of the modern U.S. states.

Early development of the northern portion of Virginia was in the easternmost area of that early land grant, which encompasses the modern counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond, and Westmoreland. At some point, these eastern counties came to be called separately simply "the Northern Neck", and, for the remaining area west of them, the term was no longer used. (By some definitions, King George County is also included in the Northern Neck, which is now considered a separate region from Northern VirginiaThe Official Guide of Virginia's Northern Neck (2007), Northern Neck Tourism Council).