Friday, June 28, 2024

1000+ Streets Called Washington

AI generated image of a street sign saying 'Washington Street on which stands a small figurine of George Washington

George Washington has more streets named after him in America than any other person in history. There are 1,399 streets named for the Founding Father in the United States, including George Washington Memorial Parkway in Washington DC and a number of Washington Streets in the state of Washington.

At the other end of the scale Babe Ruth has only 3 U.S. streets named in his honor. There are 11 other people with only 3 streets bearing their names in the whole of the U.S., including the French author Albert Camus, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and the French physicist André-Marie Ampère.

I discovered all this on Mihai Olteanu's fascinating Famous people on street names worldwide. Mihai queried Open Street Map data to discover all the roads in the world that are named for people. He then set about calculating the number of streets which are named for each of these individuals across the whole world.

Saint Joseph has streets named after him in 31 different countries. Which makes the 'not-father' of Jesus the person who has streets named after him in the most number of different countries. The next most globally recognized person is Saint George, with streets in 30 different countries. Surprisingly Jesus' mother Mary only has streets named after her in 25 different countries. 

'Famous people on street names worldwide' does not include any maps itself, but it is entirely built on map data and it is an amazing resource for anyone who wants to build a global eponym map. Using Mihai's results you can explore individual countries around the world to learn which individuals are most commemorated in street names or you can explore the 'worldwide' list of all the people commemorated at least once - sorted by the number of different countries they appear in.

If you are interested in the names of streets and who they are named for then you should explore some of the other maps listed under the toponym label on Maps Mania.

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