US places with the same name

Worked example: Springfield

The tool opens on Springfield. The Census Vintage 2024 file lists 14 incorporated places of 1,000 or more with that name, one each in 14 states. The largest is Springfield, Missouri, with 170,596 people, ahead of Springfield, Massachusetts at 154,888 and the Illinois state capital at 112,949. The smallest in the file is Springfield, Colorado, with 1,298.

Clinton tops the file with 18 places in 18 states, followed by Madison, Springfield, Jackson, Franklin, and Marion at 14 each. Greenville has 12, led by the cities in North Carolina and South Carolina. Smaller towns and unincorporated communities with these names exist too, but they are not counted here.

How to use it

1. Type a name in Place name, or press one of the example buttons: Springfield, Franklin, Clinton, or Greenville.
2. The map drops a marker on every incorporated place of 1,000+ people with that name. Hover a marker to see its state and population.
3. The readout counts the places and states, names the largest and smallest, and adds up their 2024 population. The table below lists each one, largest first.
4. Click a name under Most repeated names to load it, or press Download CSV to save the list with coordinates. The name is kept in the page address for sharing.

How names are matched

The places file stores names without the Census type word, so "Springfield city" is stored as Springfield. Matching ignores capital letters, accents, periods, apostrophes, and hyphens, and treats Saint and St. as the same word, so St. Charles and Saint Charles group together. If you type a type word such as "Franklin town" and there is no exact match, the tool drops the trailing word and tries again.

Names must match in full. Springfield does not match West Springfield or Springfield Township. When nothing matches, the tool suggests names that start with what you typed, most repeated first.

What the list covers

The list holds the 10,255 incorporated places with at least 1,000 residents in the Census Vintage 2024 subcounty estimates. Cities, towns, villages, and boroughs are all included. Census-designated places are not, because the subcounty estimates do not cover them, and neither are townships, which the Census counts as county subdivisions rather than places.

So the counts here are a floor. There are well over a dozen Springfields in the country once townships and small villages are included, but only 14 are incorporated places of 1,000+. Hawaii appears once, as Urban Honolulu, because its other communities are census-designated places.

Why some names repeat so often

Most of the repeated names come from the 1800s, when new towns were named after presidents and founders (Washington, Jackson, Madison, Franklin, Clinton, Monroe), after older towns back east (Salem, Albany, Manchester), or with names that sounded pleasant and prosperous (Greenville, Fairview, Springfield). The pattern follows westward settlement, so the same names line up across the Midwest and South.

Of the 7,374 distinct names in the file, 1,333 are shared by two or more places. The panel beside the table lists the most repeated ones; click any of them to map it. A place can repeat within one state too, such as a city and a village of the same name in Wisconsin, which is why the readout reports the most found in a single state.