The U.S. Census Bureau offers free pdf map downloads. Fantastic!
I downloaded the county map with the intention of making the county lines thicker than the state lines just to see what would happen if instead of states, we had counties.
Imagine that. Instead of 50 states, we could have 3,000 states.
But the free pdf map from the U.S. Census Bureau didn’t allow me to open it up in Illustrator. Password protected. Lame!
But the pdf did allow me to copy all the text and run it through a frequency program. The most popular county name is Washington.
The word “Saint” is also used a lot. But ignoring saint for a moment and focusing on the names. The most popular president names used by counties are Washington, Jefferson, Franklin (oops not a president), Jackson, Lincoln.
WHOA. Jackson outranked Lincoln! You go Andrew!
Here’s the top 30 most-used words in county names:
Unique words:2029 Total words:3569
Freq. Word
31 WASHINGTON
29 SAINT
28 JEFFERSON
25 FRANKLIN
24 JACKSON
23 LINCOLN
21 SAN
20 MADISON
18 UNION
18 CLAY
18 MONTGOMERY
18 LAKE
17 MONROE
17 MARION
16 WAYNE
15 CARROLL
15 GRANT
14 WARREN
14 GREENE
12 JOHNSON
12 MARSHALL
12 DOUGLAS
12 LAWRENCE
12 POLK
11 CALHOUN
11 LEE
11 SCOTT
11 FAYETTE
11 CLARK
11 MORGAN
11 ADAMS
The wikipedia continues to astound me. They have a list of counties named after United States presidents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._counties_named_after_U.S._Presidents # 1 Washington County (31 counties) # 2 Jefferson County (24 counties with 3 more indirectly named for Jefferson) # 3 Jackson County (21 counties named for Jackson) # 4 Madison County (probably 19 with 1 more indirectly named for Madison) # 5 Lincoln County (17 counties) # 6 Monroe County (17 counties) # 7 Polk County (16 counties) # 8 Grant County (12 counties) # 9 Garfield County (6 counties) # 10 Adams County (5 counties with maybe 2 more) # 11 Adams County (3 counties with maybe 2 more) # 12 Harrison County (4 counties) # 13 Pierce County (4 counties) # 14 Taylor County (4 counties) # 15 Van Buren County (4 counties) # 16 Buchanan County (3 counties) # 17 Fillmore County (3 counties) and Millard County # 18 Cleveland County (2 counties) # 19 Roosevelt County (2 counties) # 20 Tyler County (2 counties) # 21 Arthur County (1 county) # 22 Harding County (1 county) # 23 Hayes County (1 county) # 24 McKinley County (1 county) # 25 Johnson County (0 counties) # 26 Reagan County (0 counties) # 27 Clinton County (0 counties) # 28 Wilson County (0 counties) # 29 Without a County (0 counties, 24 presidents not named after a county, wtf) 24 presidents have Counties in the United States named for them. The following 19 presidents have no counties named for them: Andrew Johnson, Benjamin Harrison, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama.
Your comment to your post was going to be my comment to your post! LOL! I saw the presidential connection right away!
Imagine if Washington had a silly last name like VanStubbenbonhumpledink. There’s that one county in northern Arizona that’s huge. I don’t know what else to say about it.