Eliminating State Names Until I Find The Most Unique

[00:00:00]The 50 states which make up the United States of America, Alabama to Wyoming and everything in between, have some of the most well-known of names on our planet. Primarily down to how omnipresent the US is in the lives of so many of us, whether that be down to consuming media made in the land of the free or due to news which emanates from the land. People around the world can hear names like Oregon or Colorado or even New York and know immediately it belongs to one of the US's states. But, of all of these 50 states, which one has the most unique name? Yeah, remember that time I did this with country names?

[00:00:33]Well, we're doing it again but with state names because YouTubers love nothing more than finding a winning formula and running it into the ground.

[00:00:40]Just look at my auto-ing left series.

[00:00:41]But, maybe you didn't watch that video.

[00:00:44]Maybe you hate all other countries and just love the USA. If so, then what exactly do I mean when I say unique name? Well, I mean it's unique. A name that has no relation to other names, doesn't sound like other names, doesn't feature words found in wider language, and is even composed of letters that are far less commonly used in other parts of language, too. What this all means is that we have 50 names to deal with here and by the end of this video, we're going to conclusively prove which one has the most unique name using linguistics and maths. Wow, linguistics and maths, two of the most exciting things on the planet. I'm sure we're all very excited. But, anyway, how exactly are we going to find out which state has the most unique name? Well, if the name of this video didn't make it clear, we are having an elimination tournament to find our winner. Yeah, this is the language equivalent of Fall Guys or something. Do Do people still play Fall Guys? Hmm, I don't know. But, I've composed a series of rounds which relate to specific criteria of a name. If a state's name fits that criteria, then it's knocked out. Once again, this is very similar to how we did things last time. But, there are changes. I actually have some different rounds this time and likewise removed some rounds featured in the country names video. This is down to the fact that some of those rounds didn't make sense when just looking at the states. And if I used them this time around, this video would be way shorter.

[00:01:59]Also, we only have 50 names to deal with this time around as opposed to like 200.

[00:02:04]And of course, this is all completely subjective. I have no doubts you could get a completely different result if you use different criteria for each round or even mix up the order of the rounds. So, let's start knocking out those states.

[00:02:15]Our first round is the same as last time. Names which feature words that aren't unique to that state's name. This is when we see a word featured in a state name which is used in wider language. Like it doesn't even have to be a noun. If that doesn't make sense, I'm sure it will when we start kicking out countries during this round. The first to go are the four states with New in their name. New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. These guys collectively probably have the least unique state names out there. They're composed of the ever-present word of New, which is a word just at home on a supermarket banner as it is in a state name, and a word pulled from other parts of the world. It should come as no surprise to see these guys kicked out at the very start. Hmm, it's almost [clears throat] like they should have more unique names or something.

[00:02:56]But this round isn't just about kicking out the states with New in their name.

[00:03:00]We have states with cardinal directions in their names, too. While these words are a smidge more unique and geography-specific than New, they're still bountiful in wider language. This means we say goodbye here to North and South Dakota, North and South Carolina, as well as West Virginia. This round also kind of doubles as the states which share names around, too, with it knocking out the Dakotas and the Carolinas. Does this mean that just Virginia should go here, too? Well, no, because it doesn't technically fit the exact criteria of this round. But spoiler alert, it's not going to make it much further into this video. There is one last state we're saying goodbye to in this round, too. That being Rhode Island. Down to the fact that it features the word Island in its name, which isn't all that unique. But then again, maybe this is the most unique state name seeing as it's called Rhode Island and it's not even an island. Like I said, this is all completely subjective nonsense and shouldn't be thought too hard about. And with round one out of the way, we've already knocked out 10 state names. That's already a fifth of all the names we're dealing with today. So, let's move on to round two. That being states named after real people. I don't think I did this in the last video, but it feels more applicable here. If a state is named after someone specifically, it means that the name isn't all that unique, as clearly it shares this title with an actual person. And I want to stress here we are only dealing with actual people in this case. And when I say actual people, I mean individuals, not tribes or groups of people, as then would have way more of these names gone already.

[00:04:23]There's a couple states that are potentially named after more legendary figures, and they don't count. We actually already kicked out a few of these states in the last round. Notably, the Carolinas named after King Charles I of England, and New York named after the former Duke of York. But beyond these, the most obvious state named after a person is Washington, named after the first president, George Washington. This kicks out DC too, I guess. I'm not sure if I was including it as it's not a state, but it's gone. In fact, it's double gone, as the DC part means District of Columbia, named after Christopher Columbus. Get out of here.

[00:04:53]But this round kicks out other states, too. Many named after monarchs of the past. Georgia goes here, as it's named after King George II.

[00:05:00]Louisiana, as it's named after Louis XIV.

[00:05:02]Maryland gets the boot, too, as it's named after Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of the guy the Carolinas are named after. And yes, this is where we actually do say goodbye to Virginia, as it's named after Queen Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen. Told you wouldn't be sticking around for too long. But we aren't done just yet with states named after people. While not actual kings and queens, we have a couple more states named after guys, as well. First, we say goodbye to the home of Dunder Mifflin Scranton, Pennsylvania. Of course, the name comes from William Penn, the well-to-do Englishman who was given land here, which will go on to become the state.

[00:05:34]And finally for this round, we have Delaware. Yeah, I thought Delaware would have more legs in this video. It's a pretty unique-sounding name, and doesn't really feature elements from wider language, either. But no, it turns out it's just another a named after some snooty toff from the past. That being Thomas West, the first Baron de la Warr.

[00:05:51]Yeah, it's not from his actual name, but from his title, which counts here in my eyes as we knocked out Virginia in this round, too. And we would have booted out New York, too, for then go sooner. His title de la Warr became just Delaware.

[00:06:03]Normally, these kinds of titles come from actual places. Like the Duke of York is named after the city of York here in the UK. But, I don't think there's an actual Delaware. According to Wikipedia, the title comes from some weird old language origins. But, we don't need to get into it here. All we need to know is that Delaware was named after this dude. So, it's gone. This round knocked out a further seven state names from the rankings, meaning we have 33 more names to get through. Our next round is another unique one to this list. This round is names that appear as human settlements in other parts of the world outside the USA. Huh, that that's a bit of a mouthful. I thought this round would be fitting for the USA as the country is built on migration from people around the world. Names found in the USA can be found all over the world.

[00:06:44]And while this is cool, it goes against what we are looking for in this video.

[00:06:48]If a name can be found somewhere else on the planet, then by definition, it is not unique. But, for this round, I had to put some parameters up. Otherwise, every name would be gone. I'm only knocking it out if the name appears outside of the USA. And if the name is featured in a human settlement. So, if there's like a river or building and island called Texas, for example, then it's out. But, if it's a town or village, then it's going, no matter how small. If humans live there, it's out. I had to put these in place because after researching this round, everything would be gone. As these state names crop up all the time in other parts of the US and have found themselves applied to all sorts of things. And to research this part of the video, I just used the disambiguation pages on Wikipedia. Man, I love these things. I just love Wikipedia. I thought with all of this in place, this round wouldn't whittle things down too much. And oh boy, was I wrong. This round sees 15 state names say goodbye, more than any other round in this entire video. I didn't expect some of these names to pop up where they do. In fact, this round would have taken even more weight if they didn't get boosted already. All the new states would have gone here and places like Georgia and Washington would have gone too. Georgia down to the country of the same name and Washington due to the village in the UK where this name is thought to ultimately derive from. But, let's go through the states being kicked out here more specifically, shall we?

[00:08:02]First to mention is Maine, which shares its name with a province of France. I'm not sure if they're named after one another. And yeah, we're not going to explain why all these places share their names with states here, but I'll dangle that carrot for another video or something. California goes here, too.

[00:08:15]There's lots of villages and parts of the UK with this name. I had no clue about this. Man, imagine if I told everyone I was off to California and I just trotted off to the part of Birmingham with that name. No offense if you're watching from California, Birmingham. Never been, but I don't imagine it has quite the same vibe as the state. The Spanish-speaking world claims a lot of these names, too, with there being an Arizona in Argentina and Honduras, an Indiana in Peru, and a Nevada in Spain. Makes sense with the history of Spanish colonization in the New World. Many of these names can be found north of the border, too, in Canada. But for us here, the only one we're interested in is Ohio. Yeah, bye Ohio. Is Is Ohio still a meme? Whatever.

[00:08:54]South Africa even helps us kick a couple of these states out of running, too, with there being a Florida, a part of Cape Town, and even a Colorado in South Africa, too. But when it comes to these state names appearing in Africa, my favorite has to go to Zimbabwe. In the nation of Zimbabwe, you will find the town of Alaska.

[00:09:12]Yeah, no clue how this name ended up here. These two places are a little different, to say the least. But these all pale in comparison to Australia.

[00:09:20]Australia is full to the brim with US state names. Seriously, for this video, Australia is like that Grim Reaper meme coming for state names. Of the 15 states being knocked out in this round, six are due to places in Australia. Down under is home to the towns of Montana, Kentucky, Vermont, Utah, Wyoming, and even Texas. Lone Star State my ass.

[00:09:40]Yeah, this round was an absolute bloodbath. After this, we're down to just 18 states. Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, go birds, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. This is a really interesting mixture of state names to say the least. The majority of the really well-known states like California, Florida, and Texas are gone.

[00:10:07]I guess this makes sense, especially with the rounds I've been using. If a name is well-known, it's likely to end up somewhere else. Out of the states still standing, I would say the most well-known are the likes of Kansas, Missouri, and Mississippi. I just feel if you ask random people outside the USA to name states, these ones would possibly come up more than others on this list. Hawaii might come up if the average person knows a state, which I don't know, but maybe my expectations are just a bit low there. The ones that strike me as surprising for still being here are Michigan and Oregon. I don't know, they just give me vibes that they would have been gone by now, but no, still here. As to who I think will win at this point, I'm kind of leaning towards somewhere like Wisconsin or Hawaii. They just sound super unique to me. For the record, I don't actually know who wins at the time of writing. I kind of like to write these videos as I eliminate countries to add more excitement. I mean, obviously by the time I'm recording and animating these words, I know how things go down, but let's keep the movie magical live a little longer, shall we? But, let's crack on to round four. This is the names that start with the first two letters round. I did this in the last video, and it really helps cut the weak from the strong. I like to go with the first two letters for a couple reasons.

[00:11:10]It means we don't trim away any names too quickly, and I don't think sharing just the first letter makes a name too similar. The similarities appear way more when the first two letters match up in my eyes. From here, we say bye to Alabama, as it shares its air with Alaska. Arkansas goes here, too, thanks to the AR of Arizona. Connecticut's CO means it gets the boot here, too, thanks to Colorado. Massachusetts is off, as well, thanks to Maryland also starting with MA. Then we have four whole states starting with MI. So long Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, and my beloved Missouri.

[00:11:43]Go Birds. Oh, actually slight tangent here, but while I'm talking about the Birds, aka the St. Louis Cardinals, I need to mention my really good friend and podcast co-host Paul K. DiCostanzo.

[00:11:53]He actually started a live streaming YouTube channel called Bombers Game Mike, where he commentates on Cardinal games. It's doing super well, and it's really good fun. If you're a Cardinals fan, go give it a listen and watch and go support him cuz he's doing amazing stuff there.

[00:12:08]MI is the second most common first two letter string of all state names. The most reoccurring however is NE. There's six states that start with NE. Five have already been eliminated, the four new states as well as Nevada. But here we can kick out Nebraska too. Better luck next time, mate. And oh, another slight tangent, but this one was actually scripted. While I'm not doing similar suffixes on this video, I only just noticed that Alaska and Nebraska both end with scar. Is there a linguistic connection there? Or are both states just really into the mighty mighty Bosstones or something? But finally for this round, Tennessee is evicted too, thanks to Texas which also starts with a TE. This is a further 10 state names kicked to the curb. Yeah, we have just eight state names left in the running now. Round five brings us the states with similar names. This appeared way earlier on the country eliminator. It's later in the game this time around as across the state, there aren't as many names which sound similar when compared to country names. Like we don't have any real Austria-Australia situations going on with state names. The ones that are similar or even identical to one another are all gone by this point. So while this round is about state names that are similar to one another, a better name would be state names which are vaguely similar to one another. We have to start getting really tough at this point. If there's even a whiff of the two names sounding alike, they're getting booted off here. For example, if they weren't already gone, Mississippi and Missouri would be going home here. That's the level of similarity we're going with here. Likewise, Alaska and Nebraska would have gone here, too. Those scar-loving maniacs. But, in regards to who's actually going here, I actually only have just three names. Yeah, even when being really pedantic about things, I still only felt justified to count three in this round. So, who are those three? Well, this is probably going to be the most controversial part of this video, but I'm eliminating Idaho and Iowa here due to the fact they sound alike. Yeah, I undernerded about this one for ages, debating how much they actually sound alike. I did some digging online, and there seems to be evidence that people get these states confused.

[00:14:03]And the fact I was even thinking about the fact these names might sound alike gave me enough justification in kicking out these two names here. I know this is going to anger some people, and there's going to be claims that these names aren't similar at all. And you know what I say to that? Come at me. I feed off your rage. But, as I said, there's actually three getting evicted here. The third is actually Kansas. Yeah, we are saying goodbye to Kansas here. Now, this is a bit of an odd one. It doesn't sound especially like any other state name, but it's spelled identically to Arkansas minus that state having AR at the start of the name. Therefore, it's being evicted here.

[00:14:36]And from 50 states, we've finally whittled down to our final five. 90% of all the state names have fallen to the wayside. We quickly dealt with those really uninspired names, said goodbye to some of those heavy hitter states, and even took out some of the more unique names, too. Well, the ones I thought would be unique. So, who are our final five? Well, we have Hawaii, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Yeah, this still gives us representation from across the US, from the Midwest, the South, the Pacific Northwest, and even the Pacific Ocean. I'm really shocked to see Oregon made it this far. I expected it to go way sooner, but here it is. The little state that could, I guess.

[00:15:17]Illinois I didn't expect to see here still, but it does make some sense. It's a really unique string of letters.

[00:15:22]Oklahoma is a fun one, too. It's made up of pretty commonly heard syllables, but I guess they're not commonly heard in that order other than in this name. And then we have Hawaii and Wisconsin, the two I suspected would go far. I promise I didn't know that would be the case earlier, but when you spend your life looking at names, you kind of get a sense for these things. So, how are we going to whittle this one down even more? Well, this is where math comes into play way more with letter frequency. Letter frequency is exactly what it sounds like. Using math to track the written word to see what letters appear way more than others. There's all kinds of studies into letter frequency, but for this video, I used the research carried out by Oxford College of Emory University, as I did last time. We aren't jumping straight into frequency, however. This research also presents us with the most commonly occurring bigrams in English. Bigrams being the fancy name for two-letter combos. According to them, the most reoccurring bigrams are t, h, h, e, i, n, e, n, n, t, r, e, e, r, a, n, t, i, e, s, o, n, a, t, s, e, n, d, o, r, a, r, a, l, t, e, c, o, d, e, t, o, r, a, e, t, e, d, i, t, s, a, e, m, and r, o. Woo.

[00:16:29]So, for round six, we are going with these bigrams. If any of these bigrams appear in any of these names, then that name is eliminated. This is how strict we have to be this deep into the video.

[00:16:40]You aren't even allowed to have a popularly used two-letter combo in your name at this point. So, what we are going to do right now is put these five names into a Google Doc and control f the out of it with these bigrams. I'll be right back. Kuku control f. Kuku control f. I like to hit control f. Kuku control f. Kuku control f. I like to hit the control f. Okay, I'm back now. And oh boy, we are so close to a winner.

[00:17:04]After seeing if any of these commonly used bigrams appear in these names, we are left with two still in contention.

[00:17:10]Illinois, Oregon, and Wisconsin are all knocked out by their bigrams. I know Wisconsin is gone. Man, I was rooting for you. In fact, Wisconsin and Oregon both got super knocked out as they feature three of these bigrams each.

[00:17:24]Oregon with r, e, o, n, and o, r. And Wisconsin with i, n, o, n, and o, c.

[00:17:29]Wisconsin, man, I thought you were special, but no, you're just like the rest of them. Be gone.

[00:17:34]So, we are down to our final two. Man, I'm always amazed when these videos end up this close. Like, how did we not end up with all of them being knocked out a couple rounds ago or something? Those last two are Hawaii, one of my personal picks to win, and Oklahoma. Who saw that coming? I really thought the bigram round would have knocked it out. It's just made up of letter combos that seem really commonplace, but evidently not.

[00:17:55]Oklahoma, you are super lucky your spell was c and not k, otherwise you'd have gone out right then. But, this means we move into our final round, and it's my favorite round. The letter frequency maths round. Once again, if you watched the country names one, then you know how this goes. But, of course, if you only love America, then let me explain. The research I use gives a number to each letter in regards to its frequency. The bigger the number, the more frequent it is. E is the most frequent with a score of 0.12702, with z being the least frequent with a score of 0.00074.

[00:18:28]We are going to use these numbers to find an average score for these two country names. I'm going to use Texas as an example here to not ruin the scores of these two. The letters that make up the name of Texas have the frequency scores of 0.09056, 0.12702, 0.00150, 0.08167.

[00:18:49]God damn, there it is. And 0.06327.

[00:18:53]We add all these numbers up, which gives us 0.36402, then divide that by five, as that's how many letters in the name of Texas, and that gives us a final result of 0.072804, which we are going to round up to 0.073.

[00:19:10]Make sense, right? This is the process we are going to do with the names of Hawaii and Oklahoma to find out once and for all which one is more unique. With the lower number meaning it's more unique. Yeah, I should have mentioned that earlier. And once again, I haven't actually done the maths yet for these two. So, I'm going to do it right now.

[00:19:26]Math maths. Math math math math maths.

[00:19:29]Math math math math math math math during maths. And with that, I've returned from my maths cave. And guys, we have a winner. Yeah, thankfully this wasn't a tie or anything. We began with 50 names and slowly whittled things down until just two remained. The island state of Hawaii and the southern state of Oklahoma. Who's going to earn that title of the most unique state name? It all comes down to this. I'm going to read these in alphabetical order.

[00:19:56]Starting with Hawaii. After totting up all the numbers, I can reveal Hawaii's final uniqueness score is 0. 065.

[00:20:07]So, any number lower than this means that Oklahoma is our winner. And what did Oklahoma score? Well, I can now reveal its score is 0.

[00:20:19]056.

[00:20:21]56.

[00:20:23]There you have it. Oklahoma officially takes the Name Explain crown of the US state with the most unique name. Who saw that coming? I was sure Hawaii would take the win on this one. Still, silver's no mean feat for my hunch.

[00:20:36]But no, it's little old Oklahoma, the land of Jim Ross, the res dogs, and one of the US's weirdest pan handles that takes this title. Great great showing. A huge well done to Oklahoma. And it won by a fair margin compared to Hawaii. I appreciate the numbers are just swapped around on both of them. If I had to imagine why Oklahoma won this over Hawaii, I think it actually has to do with its K. K is actually a really infrequent letter, which might have helped boost its score. Yeah, Oklahoma's K is once again to the rescue. Hawaii's least frequent letter is W, which is probably more commonly seen than you might expect. Plus, it has two eyes in it. I is the fifth most frequently seen letter. So, that would have hindered its chances, too. But, that's just my musings. A huge well done to Oklahoma.

[00:21:18]Someone go send them a trophy or something. And the final thing I want to stress is that this tournament could have gone in any direction depending on how I set the rounds up. If you don't believe me, check out this amazing spreadsheet created by Matan Earley.

[00:21:30]Apologies if I mispronounce your name, mate. Sorry, go. Um I'm sure you're watching this. Go. Let me know how I did down below, but yeah, sorry, man. But, they're a great viewer of the channel.

[00:21:38]Shortly after the country name eliminator video went out, they sent this over to me. It's a series of spreadsheets detailing the letter frequency average of every country. They even went a step beyond to include the state names, too. I actually didn't look at it while making this video as I actually didn't want any spoilers, but what we can see is that through letter frequency averages alone, Wyoming is the clear winner with Oklahoma in seventh place and Hawaii all the way in 30th.

[00:22:03]So, maybe Wyoming is the actual winner here. In fact, it probably would have been if it weren't for somewhere in Australia having this exact name too.

[00:22:15]Hello, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you all so much for watching this one. These eliminator videos are really fun to make. I can't believe it took me this long to make a follow-up one. I'm so bad at this. Often, I have like a video do well, and instead of going, "I'll make another one similar to that," I'll be like, "No, I'll just make something else completely random." Why does my brain work like that? You guys if you guys want something, you want something else exactly like it, right? Not exactly, you know, similar vibe. So, I don't know. I need to be better at doing this. So, I hope this one does well. I hope you haven't forgotten about that previous one and are back to watch this one as well cuz that'd be swell. Thank you all so much for enjoying this one. This was really fun to do. I thought it wouldn't be as exciting cuz it was just 50 names, but we made it work, I feel. Uh yeah, if you really did enjoy this video, please do consider becoming a patron or a channel member. It costs just $1 a month from Patreon. You get ad-free videos and of course you get my exclusive video series two terrain explained the newest terrain explained video just went live earlier this week and it's it's US centric again it's about things that go on in the US Canadian border I kind of just took a little Google Maps like journey across the border and just found interesting things there like weird Islands and weird buildings and like towns that split the border I don't know I just thought it was fascinating hopefully you guys do as well. Anyway I've spoken more than enough it's actually really hot and as you guys probably know I record in a basement under my stairs so I'm actually sweating one out right now I can feel the sweat dripping off my face as I speak so I'm I'm going to go and just like eat a big bag of ice or something okay well take care love you bye.