I was hence fascinated past times Dirk Kloosterboer's fascinating investigation into the spatial distribution of roads named 'Holleweg' (or 'Holloway') roughly the globe that I decided to endeavour my ain investigation into the spatial distribution of place-names. For my analysis I wanted to explore the density in addition to distribution of towns in addition to cities inward Europe named for Christian saints.
As a operate of information visualization my finished map should live on taken amongst a slice of salt. Soon afterward starting my investigation I realized my lack of linguistic communication skills was seriously going to impair my query into towns named for saints across Europe. However despite the fact that my map is side past times side to useless I nonetheless mean value the procedure of making it is quite interesting.
If you lot desire to persuasion the finished map hence you lot tin notice it hither - The Saints Of Europe.
All the information from my map comes from OpenStreetMap. To larn the information I used Overpass Turbo. I queried Overpass Turbo to notice towns in addition to cities which included the words 'St', 'Saint', 'San', 'Santo', 'Santa' in addition to 'Sankt'. You tin run into how the query is formed inward the representative below:
[out:json][timeout:85];
// get together results
(
node[place=town] ["name" "Santo "]({{bbox}});
node[place=city] ["name" "Santa "]({{bbox}});
node[place=city] ["name" "Santo "]({{bbox}});
node[place=town] ["name" "Santa "]({{bbox}});
node[place=city] ["name" "San "]({{bbox}});
node[place=town] ["name" "San "]({{bbox}});
);
// impress results
out body;
>;
out skel qt;
Rather than search for specified countries I restricted my search to stone oil bounding boxes roughly the UK, France, Spain, FRG in addition to Italy. I wanted to confine my search to these countries only I was besides interested inward capturing whatsoever towns in addition to cities named for saints inward areas closely bordering these countries every minute well. Therefore rather than querying these countries individually past times advert I used a bounding box for searching each country. These bounding boxes overlapped other countries to capture towns inward other countries virtually the province border.
I carried out 5 assort searches inward Overpass Turbo (one each for the UK, France, Spain, FRG in addition to Italy. I downloaded the results of each search every minute a GeoJSON file. I hence combined the 5 assort files into ane GeoJSON file using geojson.io.
Once I had ane GeoJSON file containing all the towns in addition to cities named for saints I saved it every minute a tileset inward Mapbox Studio. The information downloaded from Overpass Turbo besides included the population of every town in addition to metropolis named for a saint. When you lot charge a tileset into the Mapbox Studio means editor you lot tin means how the information appears on the map. I decided to demo each town every minute circles amongst the radius of the circles determined past times the population size of the town or city. Therefore on my finished map the size of the circles represents the size of the population.
Although I wouldn't recommend my map every minute an effective information visualization I produce notice it interesting that the Protestant countries of FRG in addition to the United Kingdom of Great Britain in addition to Northern Ireland of Britain in addition to Northern Republic of Ireland look to get got far fewer towns named for saints than the Catholic countries of Italy, French Republic in addition to Spain. FRG inward detail seems to get got real few towns named for saints.
