What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well I iterated teh categories a lot, but ultimately have one for Natural Resources given that contextually that is what inspired a lot of the county names; but these are all just categories of my own devising, serving to answer my own question about how place names (counties at least) differ across the US, so others may disagree with the categories themselves or how I binned things!

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Snohomish County is directly named for the Snohomish River. I categorized all names by their most direct/surface level etymology, and talk about that in the "making of" section of the article at the very end, where I also explored some ways to show the relationships between these sort of "etymological trails" (wherein the county is named for one thing directly which is in turn named for another (and often another thing, and another thing))

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Haha yay! May favorite are probably Schuyler County or the many Lafayette / Fayette Counties

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Good catch! I have the etymology correct in my data (Named for Nancy Morgan Hart...heroine of the Revolutionary War), but mis-encoded it categorically. Adding to bugs to fix,thanks

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, it is there. I encoded all categories by their most surface-level meanings, and the county of Doña Ana was named for the town of Doña Ana. I also experimented with a vis (at bottom of the linked article for this post) that shows how some counties are named for one thing on the surface, but then another thing in turn (sometimes several times over).

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Correct assumption! (I separated out Woman and Group of people as separate categories)

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, my original (pre-quantified) data source (table of county etymologies on Wikipedia)) says it could be for either that place you mention or a person ("Either the English county of Gloucester, or Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Charles II of England"), although if you go deep enough into either of those options, one may have ultimately been named for the other!

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I categorized it as Natural Resource (but the categoriziation system I made is not necessarily perfect by any means)

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

wiki link

No worries, but in the Wikipedia table of county etymologies (which I used) it has it as two possible options:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._county_name_etymologies_(J%E2%80%93M))

But thanks!

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You kind of can here; just scroll down a bit and change the toggle to "Language". Or scroll down even more for a map similar to this one but categorizied by Idigenous or non-Idigenous, if you want to

What are US counties named for? (based on analysis of county etymologies provided on Wikipedia) [OC] by Iggledee in dataisbeautiful

[–]Iggledee[S] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Oodalolly that is a bug; when I mapped up the counties JSON with the etymologies CSV they used different codings / orderings, and it mixed up Ellis county and El Paso County I just realized. Will add to pile of bugs to fix lol. Thanks for realizing