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If you were to name a church, how would you go about it? Let’s see how people have named churches in the U.S. by looking at a random sample of 300,000 church names gathered using the Yahoo! Local Search API.

The Word “Church”

You might start with the word “church” in your name. About 2/3 of churches in the dataset have the word “church.” (The number of churches with the word “church” in reality is higher, as the dataset often truncates names.) Other popular nouns: center, fellowship, chapel, assembly, ministries (or ministry), temple, tabernacle, and iglesia.

Most Common Words in Church Names

Here’s a wordle of the most common words that appear in church names (excluding the word “church”):

Most Common Words in Church Names, Excluding Denominations

Denominations overpower the raw list. Here’s a wordle of the same data without denomination names:

Full Church Names

Here are the most common church names in the U.S. Also download the top 1,000 church names in the U.S. (29 KB Excel document), covering 95,000 churches, if you want more information.

Church Name	Churches
first baptist church	5,115
church of christ	2,854
first united methodist church	2,149
first presbyterian church	1,960
united methodist church	1,488
seventh-day adventist church	1,478
first christian church	1,309
calvary baptist church	1,197
church of the nazarene	915
trinity lutheran church	892
salvation army	867
first assembly of god	744
church of god	677
faith baptist church	663
st john’s lutheran church	601
grace baptist church	600
first congregational church	575
assembly of god church	565
new hope baptist church	540
zion lutheran church	523

Saints

The word “St.” (Saint) is common in more traditional churches, such as Catholic, Episcopalian, and Lutheran. Here are the most popular saint names used for churches:

Saint	Churches
John	3,713
Paul	3,210
Mary	1,832
Peter	1,362
James	1,270
Joseph	1,153
Mark	1,062
Luke	1,053
Andrew	789
Matthew	724
Stephen	582
Michael	532
Francis	530
Thomas	511
Patrick	431
Anthony	381
George	329
Ann(e)	282
Nicholas	253
Elizabeth	220

Mountains

Mountains and hills are common names for churches. I suspect that “Spring Hill” and the assorted “Pleasant”s come from the city names where the churches stand.

Mountain	Churches
mt zion	1,587
mt olive(t)	1,122
mt calvary	619
mt carmel	528
mt pleasant	475
pleasant hill	394
mt moriah	329
mt sinai	316
zion hill	200
mt pisgah	191
mt nebo	139
mt tabor	136
mt pilgrim	112
mt hope	108
mt gilead	95
mt bethel	90
spring hill	90
mt hermon	85
mt lebanon	74
mars hill	59

Denominations

Here are the most-common two-word phrases (including denomination names) used in some of the more popular denominations. “First” appears in 12% of Baptist church names, 10% of Methodist church names, only 3% of Lutheran church names, and fully 21% of Presbyterian church names.

Baptist	Methodist	Lutheran	Presbyterian
first baptist	united methodist	trinity lutheran	first presbyterian
missionary baptist	first united	st john’s	united presbyterian
freewill baptist	chapel united	st paul’s	cumberland presbyterian
grove baptist	free methodist	evangelical lutheran	korean presbyterian
calvary baptist	trinity united	zion lutheran	westminster presbyterian
hill baptist	memorial united	grace lutheran	covenant presbyterian
zion baptist	st paul	our savior’s	community presbyterian
hope baptist	grace united	faith lutheran	memorial presbyterian
creek baptist	grove united	immanuel lutheran	trinity presbyterian
faith baptist	wesley united	christ lutheran	orthodox presbyterian
mt zion	zion united	peace lutheran	reformed presbyterian
bethel baptist	hill united	redeemer lutheran	grace presbyterian
new hope	christ united	first lutheran	hill presbyterian
grace baptist	bethel united	good shepherd	faith presbyterian
bible baptist	faith united	hope lutheran	hope presbyterian
chapel baptist	hope united	calvary lutheran	christ presbyterian
community baptist	street united	bethlehem lutheran	central presbyterian
mt olive	asbury united	st peter’s	valley presbyterian
memorial baptist	park united	bethany lutheran	creek presbyterian
southern baptist	salem united	messiah lutheran	park presbyterian

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Churches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.