Abstract:
Geographic features, such as streams and summits, have official names that are recorded by the
United States government, and citizens can submit proposals to officially change one of these
names. Name change proposals to the government from 2017 and 2018 were analyzed to
understand different factors that contribute to modern naming practices. Various elements from
each proposal were categorized and recorded so that numerical analysis could show why
proposals are submitted, what features are in most proposals, what kinds of names are suggested,
and what naming choices imply about American people in general. Each proposal also includes
the latitude and longitude coordinates of its specific geographic feature. This detail allowed all
the features from the name change proposals to be mapped in ArcGIS Online, and spatial
analysis was done on the different categories recorded for each feature. The results of these
different studies are discussed, along with what their implications might be and what areas could
be further studied in the future.
