Town Census: More Names

January 17, 2023

This is the final installment of looking at the Bedford Town Census data. Part 1 was looking at birthdays and Part 2 examined first names. 

Last week, the Annual Town Census landed in Bedford mailboxes. It’s important to return the form this week. As stated on the back: “compliance with this State requirement provides proof of residence, protection of voting rights, veteran’s bonus, housing for the elderly and related benefits as well as providing information for your community.” One of the resources the List of Residents creates is information for first responders.

Fred Rogers asked, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” With the help of Town Clerk Bridget Rodrigue, we’ve decided to provide some information for our community from the List of Residents (or at least the 11,283 residents from households that sent back their 2022 town census form and are over 18 years old, along with some data from the 2021 American Community Survey and 2020 Decennial Census).

Return the Annual Town Census forms to the Town Clerk this week.

There are 166 residents in the list that identify with the title Jr. Their namesakes haven’t labeled themselves as frequently in town, only 15 residents identify with the Sr. (Senior) title on the resident list.  We have 13 the seconds (II), 41 the thirds (III), and 6 residents are the fourths (IV!)

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Whether they are related or not, there are 123 names (first and last) that are repeated in the List. One first and last name combination is repeated across four individuals. There are six same names that are held by three different people in town, leaving 232 residents to share 116 repeat names. 

The 15 most frequent last names out of the 4972 different surnames on the List (in order of most frequent) are Smith, Chen, Lee, Johnson, Sullivan, Kim, Miller, Brown, Young, Wang, Anderson, Li, Murphy, Patel, and Liu. 

76 percent of names on the List of Residents have an entry in the middle name column, although 54 percent of those listed only a single middle initial. Of those that reported a full middle name the most common are Marie and Ann. Accordingly, M is the most frequent middle initial (1,090 residents), closely followed by A (1,068 residents); the two account for nearly 20 percent of all Bedford residents on the list, and a quarter of all those reporting anything in the middle name column. X, U, and Q pull up the rear with only six, seven, and eight residents reporting those letters as a middle initial. 

For residents responding in the Nationality column of the Town Census (in order of frequency) Bedford welcomes citizens of Chinese, Indian, Canadian, British, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, German, Brazilian, French, Israeli, Spanish, Irish, Lebanese, Nepali, Russian, Armenian, Danish, Dominican, Dutch, Hungarian, Swedish, Turkish, Belarus, Colombian, Czech, Finnish, Haitian, Mexican, Slovenian, Trinidadian, Bangladeshi, Chilean, Egyptian, Italian, Kazakh, Kenyan, New Zealand, Norwegian, and Ukrainian nationality.

The list reports 270 street names in town. The most populated street in town is calculated as Springs Road, followed by South Road. The top five most populated streets (Springs Road, South Road, Concord Road, Old Billerica Road, and Page Road) house 14.5 percent of the List of Residents population (recall, this list is residents over 18 years old). 

The average number of residents living on any given street is 41.8. There is a street listed with one resident, three streets with two residents, and one street with three residents, none of them is Short Street. 23 streets have more than 100 people on the list reporting them as home, while double the number of streets (46 streets) are home base for fewer than 10 adult residents. 

Mae Street and Elm Road residents have the fewest letters to spell out to someone asking for their address, while those on Benjamin Kidder Lane and Mitchell Grant Way have the greatest number of characters required to get their addresses correct. These two streets join Paul Revere, Francis Kelley, Caesar Jones, and Ruben Duren in including a first and last name in honor of a man. There is no similar honor in town for a woman (stated after a quick Google search verifying that Princess Pine is the name of a plant – not a human or Nintendo video game character).   

We have an Old Billerica, Old Burlington, Old Causeway, and Old Stagecoach, but no street names starting with New. Residents of 20 streets might have to check somewhere else in town for missing packages more often than others, as there are 10 pairs of streets that are the same name differentiated by Road, Street, Way, Court, Circle, Terrace, Village, or Place. Although there are likely plenty of other close calls, such as Highview Avenue and Highland Avenue. We also have Hilda, Hill, Hillcrest, Hillside, and Hilltop in town. 

This concludes the delve into the 2022 Bedford List of Residents, let us know if you would like us to present town data from the 2021 American Community Survey and 2020 Decennial census.

Editor’s disclaimer: Data included is calculated to the best of our ability and knowledge using the resources mentioned, but is collated for entertainment purposes only.

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Barbara
February 2, 2023 6:56 pm

Such fun to read…Babs

Heather Randhahn
January 18, 2023 8:51 am

This has been a fun series and a great way to promote the Bedford Town Census.

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