David and I were looking at comparisons of county-level election results (cool scatterplots to come) and, just for laughs, we made a ranking of the most common county names in America. Take a guess as to what they are. . . . The top 15 are listed below:
Washington (31 states)
Jefferson (26 states)
Franklin (25)
Lincoln (24)
Jackson (24)
Madison (20)
Union (18)
Clay (18)
Montgomery (17)
Monroe (17)
Marion (17)
Wayne (16)
Grant (15)
Warren (14)
Greene (14)
Showing my bias, I figured Adams county would have ranked higher.
wow, that's some serious patriotism going on.
To foreign eyes, this looks weird. "And we name this county … Wayne".
Oh, and amongst Scunthorpe schoolchildren (of which I was formally one), Lincoln was best known for its lunatic asylum.
Bob
Is Washington one of the states with a Washington county?
Bob,
You have a good, or at least amusing, point. I am reminded of an old Saturday Night Live news story about Libya going to war with Chad. What, a whole country is attacking ONE GUY?
The wikipedia entry on Scunthorpe is interesting, and…"funny" isn't quite the word, but…let's just say that it contains many sentences that could be read aloud, and followed by an upraised eyebrow. I like the fact that the Coat of Arms includes two fossilized oysters and a blast furnace, and that Scunthorpe's motto is "Refulget labores nostros coelo" or "The heavens reflect our labours," popularly attributed to the glow observed in the night sky from steelmaking activities.
So, each country has its peculiarities. We have counties like Wayne and Henry, and you have towns like Chucklehead-on-Phlegm. Vive la difference.
Wayne and Monroe counties actually border each other in Metro-Detroit. I wonder if you can find any other pairs.
No, Washington state doesn't have a Washington county. Below is a link to the WA county names:
http://www.mrsc.org/byndmrsc/counties.aspx