The most common words in place (town/city) names per state in the U.S.
The most common words in place (town/city) names per state in the U.S.
25 comments
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Do people in New Mexico just not talk all year untill Christmas or do they just constantly all year talk about Santa?
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This map makes zero sense. I need to see the data to understand I think. I'm unfamiliar with the apparently majority of Hawaiian cities with the name "Hawaiian" in them? In fact, there isn't a single one to my knowledge.
And while Kansas City and Souix City or NYC all have city in the name, I'm scrolling around Georgia for instance, and there isn't a single "______ City" in the state that I can see.
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Going down Wikipedia's list of municipalities in Georgia I see Garden City, Iron City, Junction City, Lake City, Lumber City, Mountain City, Peachtree City, Ray City, Sale City, Twin City, and Union City. Despite the "city" element, a good number of them are towns of a few hundred people and wouldn't be easy to spot on a map
Edit: same method for Hawai'i shows Hawaiian Acres, Hawaiian Paradise Park, Hawaiian Ocean View, and Hawaiian Beaches
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I guess it doesn't take very many to make the map if there are no/few other identifiable naming conventions. Fair strategy scrolling municipalities on Wikipedia - thanks for that.
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Hawaiian should be it's own category/color, like Spanish. It makes more sense since there's far more naive Hawaiian words than just "Hawaiian".
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I think it actually literally means the word "Hawaiian" rather than anything in the Hawaiian language. I found four examples of place names fitting that
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…"Lodge"? 🤨 TIL
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An indigenous thing I am guessing. Especially since Montana and its surroundings were one of the areas that was the last to resist European colonization. Although the mapmaker shouldn't have listed it as 'nature,' unless they're talking about a beaver lodge or something, but I'm doubtful.
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I have a theory on this. Wikipedia's list of municipalities in Montana shows three "lodge" place names: Deer Lodge, Lodge Grass, and Red Lodge. The pages for Deer Lodge and Red Lodge don't explain their names, but the one for Lodge Grass does. It's a mistranslation of the Crow name for the place, but it does refer to the actual grass in the area. So now the author has two with no answer found and one with a natural explanation
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You're correct on the origins of "Lodge." Not referring to beaver dams, Native American lodges have long been used for housing and ceremonial traditions.
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Is it just me or did they apply a gradient to Maine to indicate being split between two colors, but then didn't do the same for South Dakota or Michigan despite also being split between two categories?
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It's funny that many the older states have new
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I like how "West" occurs in the East.
EDIT (2025-02-02T05:24Z): It just occurred to me that this might've been because the USA generally began on the east coast [2], so those states might've contained the western-most cities at the time — New Jersey, which is on the easternmost side [1], contains cities with "East" in their name.
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looks like falls and river and hills and lodge and east and town are the most unique in that I only see one state for each. They are likely second or third in a lot of states I wager though. I bet falls is likely the most uniqur regularly used one.
25 comments