Nehaveigur

The pioneers who settled the West had many qualities, but imagination when it came to place names wasn’t one of them. Anyone spending time outdoors in California or other Western states will across the same toponyms over and over again. In California alone, there are more than a dozen Rattlesnake Creeks.

I was curious how common this is, so I asked Claude Code to compile a table of the most common toponyms in the West. The winner is Bear Creek, of which there are almost 499.

Name	Creek	Spring	Canyon	Lake	Gulch	Mountain
Bear	499	156	206	78	185	74
Rock	405	245	118	80	12	16
Red	175	153	154	86	42	180
Willow	462	354	74	34	20	9
Cottonwood	440	246	191	18	40	8
Black	129	123	192	67	24	221
Mud	123	377	42	172	24	9
Horse	220	104	146	36	30	70
Indian	321	182	71	22	20	22
Pine	203	126	119	26	29	54

Some of those are astounding. Mud Lake? Rock Mountain? That made me curious if there’s also a Water Lake, and of course there is. Maybe the discoverers came across it and said “What a lake,” and someone misunderstood. At least I hope so.

Here’s Claude Code determining that composers lived shorter than other professions.