The Most Uniquely Popular Word on Each Country’s Wikipedia Page Mapped

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Every country’s Wikipedia page is filled with important information detailing the nation’s economy, culture, and geography.

Still, the world continues to read and represent itself on Wikipedia. There are 27 countries with hundreds of millions of monthly page views each (the U.S. and Japan are top, with three and one billion, respectively).

Even in China, where Chinese-language Wikipedia is banned, the website counts over three million monthly hits.

The Crossword-Solver team wondered which words the world chooses to represent itself. So, the team checked the page for every country (and U.S. state and city) to find the words and places most commonly used on each Wiki page.

Key Findings

• The most commonly used word on the United States Wikipedia page is native, occurring 22 times.
• The most common word on the United Kingdom Wikipedia page is devolve (13).
• The United States is the most mentioned country on the highest number of other countries’ pages (16).
• New York, Missouri, and Virginia are each the most mentioned state on 5 other states’ pages.

The Most Uniquely Popular Word on Every Country’s Wikipedia Page

Every country’s Wikipedia page is filled with important information detailing the nation’s economy, geography, and culture. For instance, the most uniquely popular word on the page for Ivory Coast is cocoa – the country’s primary export. In Finland, the most uniquely popular word is sauna – a mainstay of Finnish culture, with 60% to 90% of the Finnish population having a sauna once a week.

The Most Mentioned Country on Every Country’s Wikipedia Page

Mentions of other countries on the national Wikipedia pages provide a brief snapshot of world history and geopolitical influence. Former colonial power is the most mentioned country in some countries (Angola, Barbados, Ivory Coast). While China is the most populous country, it is the most mentioned country on only four pages. Meanwhile, India is the most mentioned country on 21 pages – the most of any nation. The country’s outdo presence is partly due to India’s long history of empire throughout the Indian subcontinent and the widespread outbound migration of Indian workers.

The Most Uniquely Popular Word on Every U.S. State’s Wikipedia Page

Mapping the most uniquely popular word on Wikipedia pages across the United States reveals a patchwork of economic, geographic, and cultural history unique to each state. In Delaware, the state of corporation for 67% of the Fortune 500, the most uniquely popular word is corporate. In Utah, where 55% of the population belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most uniquely popular word is Mormon.

The Most Mentioned U.S. State on Every State’s Wikipedia Page

While most state Wikipedia pages mention neighboring states the most, Montana’s most mentioned state is Missouri -due in part to the importance of the Missouri River. Only five other U.S. state pages mention non-neighboring states the most. In five pairs of states – Michigan and Wisconsin, New York and New Jersey, West Virginia and Virginia, California, and Nevada, and Missouri and Kansas – the two states are one another’s a most-mentioned state.

Methology

Text of Wikipedia pages for each country, state, and city were taken directly from Wikipedia in English. Texts were cleaned to only include the main entry, excluding sections such as “See also,” “References,” “Further reading,” etc. Further data cleaning included removing demonyms (e.g. “french” for France), names of major cities, names of countries themselves, and all the usual stop words like articles (“a,” “the”), linking words (“and,” “or”), prepositions, etc. Finally, after compiling all the words appearing in the Wiki entry for a given country, the team grouped different forms of the same words together (e.g. large, larger, largest => large) so they could be analyzed as a single item.

Most used words for each country, state, and city were determined using the TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) algorithm, which is a measure that evaluates how relevant a word is to a particular text in a collection of texts. Using this algorithm, the Crossword-Solver team could determine which word was most distinctly relevant to each Wikipedia entry. Names of geographic entities (rivers, seas, islands), people’s last names, and names of companies, political parties, or organizations were excluded when choosing the most distinctly relevant word.

Most mentioned countries and states were taken as a country or state with the highest number of mentions in another country’s or state’s Wikipedia entry.

Data was collated and analyzed in Aug 2022.