The most common place name in each European country

30 comments
  1. Source: OpenStreetMap.org

    I extracted all settlements for every European country from OpenStreetMap and calculated which place name is the most common one per country. I decided to focus only on cities, towns and villages. I did not include hamlets, due to the fact that the definition of a hamlet (unlike cities, towns and villages) varies widely per country in OpenStreetMap. Often times these hamlets don’t even consist of a single house.

    If you’d like to read a bit more about this map and how I calculated what the most common place name is, then have a look at [the article on my website](http://landgeist.com/2023/02/04/most-common-place-names-in-europe/).

  2. The Greek, Turkish, Polish, Czech, Croatian and Romanian names mean the same thing: New Village.

    Edit: Just noticed the list on the top left. Apparently it is the same in even more languages..

  3. I actually live near one Nowa Wieś so I must say that it’s quite accurate in my experience. It just means “new village”.

  4. All the Balkan places…

    All different version of ново село ‘novo selo’ which means ‘new village’.

    Now im just thinking how daft itd be in the UK if somewhere like milton keynes was called “new village”

  5. Well there are 15 *Nova vas*’s in Slovenia however the majority of them have a **near** *some other place* added to distinguish them from each other

  6. There are also three places in the Netherlands called Oudega/Aldegea (in Dutch/Frisian respectively). Was one of them too small to be included here?

  7. I think the current map is wrong. Of the 4,702 settlements in Estonia, there are:

    – 12 Vanamõisa (Old Manor)
    – 10 Mäeküla (Hill Village)
    – 8 Metsaküla and 6 Metsküla (Forest Village)
    – 8 Aruküla (Dry Grassland Village)
    – 8 Nõmme (Heath)
    – 8 Nurme (Field or Dry Grassland)
    – 8 Mõisaküla (Manor Village)
    – 8 Tammiku (Oak Grove)

  8. I notice that for the Netherlands, Rijkswijk is in areas where Dutch was spoken for millennia. While in the north, Nes is chosen three times in areas that where Frisian is or was spoken in history.

  9. Lol, Luxemburg is just plain lazy. Like getting 3 dogs and running out of ideas after the first one got its name.

  10. I am not sure. Slovakia could be Teplica or Teplička.

    They can be on their own but are often combined with “above/bellow -feature” of “Feature-of” Eg Teplička nad Váhom, or Liptovská Teplička.

    The word Teplička/Teplica would refer to “hearing place/place of warmth/place where warth is… It’s a weird one to translate.

    At the same time Slovakia also has a lot of places (more than 5 that I can count) called Ves.
    The Slovak version of the polish Wies.

  11. There are over 3,000 castles in Ireland, I live less than 100m from a square casellated tower, built by the Knights Hospitaller, but there is another castle at the other end of the town in Castletown.

  12. If you’ve been trying to follow the news from the war, you won’t be surprised Ukraine reaches 97 towns with the same name. No wonder the vatniks get lost.

  13. Steinbach is the new Springfield. If you even wanna know someone ypu don’t want them where you live i guess you kust tell them you live in Strinbach, Germany. Even if it’s true how can they figure out where you actually live lol

  14. My town has a suburb named Novo Selo. It’s not on the map. it was formed as a village for German immigrants in early 19th century and absorbed by the town as a suburb after WW2.

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