Place Name Search Engine

Places Named http://www.placesnamed.com/ is a search engine for place names that also incorporates information about last names in the United States. Over 200,000 place names and last names are incorporated into this engine.

The query box is on the left of the front page. Enter a place name. (Pebble works well.) You'll get a list of places with that name, along with the location (state, county, sometimes elevation.) Information varies by the type of listing. Do a search for Rocky; you'll see the popularity of the word as a first name, the postal code for Rocky, Oklahoma, stats on the town of Rocky, Oklahoma, and other listings. (If you want to see stats on a last name try the query Lightning.)

You don't have to enter a place name to get search results. You can use a zip code or an area code as well. Entering smaller numbers, like area codes, can get you weird results. 818, for example, will show you that it's an area code for Los Angeles, but it'll also tell you that Carver is the 818th most popular last name in the US, Egypt's ISO-3166 number is 818, and other interesting bits. An interesting collection of information here. Worth a look.

Posted to Science-Geography