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Subject: Re: MAPS-L: THE Cities and THE towns
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005
From: Dennis McClendon <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps, Air Photo & Geospatial Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>



> How many cities and towns have "The" in their name?

A quick run through the list of "populated places" in GNIS yields 465
entries, excluding those that are obviously subdivisions or mobile
home parks.  However, I feel certain that the great majority of the
rest are, in fact, mere isolated subdivisions rather than anything we
might consider a "town."  Many appear to be of the pattern "The
Willows," which I would bet are subdivisions named in the last 20
years.  Of course, I'd be happy to send my list to anyone interested.

I tried the same experiment with the FIPS55 listing, but was puzzled
that it seemed to contain many listings like "John F.Kennedy Center
For The Performing Arts," so I will not report those results.

The US Postal Service has listings of post offices on its website,
but they can only be downloaded state by state.  Over the weekend
I'll try to aggregate and search those.

Your patron, of course, doesn't specify US cities and towns, but I
don't have immediate access to a worldwide database of placenames.

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