Lake, River, Creek: water in street names
Our counts from the Census Bureau's TIGER/Line Feature Names files: 8,261,451 streets in 3,231 counties.
Our take written by All Streets
Lake is on 9,451 streets in the files and River on 8,630. View and side forms are counted under their own names: Lakeview on 7,009, Riverside on 3,773 and Riverview on 3,114.
Spring appears on 6,270 streets and Creek on 2,329, with Ocean on 1,230 and Waterfront on 361. Springs, plural, appears on 257.
Our reading of the counts on this page. It adds no facts of its own.
| Base name | Streets | Share of all streets |
|---|---|---|
| Lake | 9,451 | 0.11% |
| River | 8,630 | 0.10% |
| Lakeview | 7,009 | 0.08% |
| Spring | 6,270 | 0.08% |
| Riverside | 3,773 | 0.05% |
| Shore | 3,693 | 0.04% |
| Riverview | 3,114 | 0.04% |
| Bay | 2,852 | 0.03% |
| Lakeshore | 2,689 | 0.03% |
| Brookside | 2,496 | 0.03% |
| Beach | 2,443 | 0.03% |
| Creek | 2,329 | 0.03% |
| Brook | 2,204 | 0.03% |
| Creekside | 2,170 | 0.03% |
| Harbor | 1,836 | 0.02% |
| Pond | 1,812 | 0.02% |
| Ocean | 1,230 | 0.01% |
| Bayshore | 563 | 0.01% |
| Waterfront | 361 | 0.00% |
| Springs | 257 | 0.00% |
Rows from the Census files
Verbatim field values from the county Feature Names files behind this page's counts. Each is one edge record; our count treats each LINEARID as one street.
| File (county) | TLID | LINEARID | FULLNAME | NAME | PREDIRABRV | PRETYPABRV | SUFTYPABRV | SUFDIRABRV | MTFCC | PAFLAG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tl_2025_26033_featnames.zip Chippewa County, Michigan | 130569588 | 1101000408053 | S Lake Rd | Lake | S | Rd | S1400 | P | ||
| tl_2025_05005_featnames.zip Baxter County, Arkansas | 2946788 | 1101008271883 | Lake Dr | Lake | Dr | S1400 | P | |||
| tl_2025_13121_featnames.zip Fulton County, Georgia | 17333074 | 1101019235092 | N Springs Ct | Springs | N | Ct | S1400 | P |
Our checker re-read these rows from census.gov on October 14.
How we counted
Method note Our count of Census linear features (streets, as defined in the method note): one street is one LINEARID that carries a primary name (PAFLAG P) on at least one edge classed S1200 or S1400, with a non-blank NAME, across 3,234 of the 3,235 county files; the file for St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands was answered by the Census server with a "Request Rejected" page and is left out. A name counts once per LINEARID, so a road the Census splits into several linear features counts more than once. Full method and definitions →
The MAF/TIGER System breaks/ends linear elemental features when the feature name changes. All spelling differences result in a new feature. Features will also break at county boundaries, changes in primary/alternate designation, MTFCC, and gaps in the geometry.
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