Lincoln Elementary is the most common public school name in the United States, used by 214 schools in 37 states, according to an allk12 analysis of federal school data for the 2024-25 school year. Washington Elementary is second with 156 schools, followed by Central Elementary with 152 and Jefferson Elementary with 144.
Repeated names are still the exception. The 97,501 public schools that reported students in 2024-25 use 76,288 different names. The ten most common names cover 1,096 schools, about 1% of the total. Most schools carry a name used nowhere else in the country.
Surnames shared with presidents fill the top of the elementary list. After Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson come Roosevelt Elementary (92 schools), Madison (60), Wilson (60), McKinley (56), and Garfield (52), and Jackson, Adams, Monroe, and Grant elementaries all make the top 50 as well. A surname alone does not say who a school was named for, so the table counts names, not namesakes.
Places and directions account for most of the rest: Central, Fairview, Mountain View, Highland, North, West, Riverside, and Lakeview. Liberty Elementary (69 schools) and Heritage Elementary (48) round out the civic names near the top.
High schools follow their own pattern. Central High is the most common high school name, with 71 schools in 32 states, followed by Liberty High with 34 and Lincoln High with 27. Among middle schools, Central Middle leads with 50 and Lincoln Middle follows with 33.
What is the most common name in each state?
Central Elementary is the most common name, alone or tied, in 10 states, more than any other. Lincoln Elementary leads in 9, and Illinois has the most of any single name in one state, with 38 Lincoln Elementary schools. Ties are common: Texas splits its lead four ways among Austin, Crockett, Lamar, and Smith elementaries, with 13 schools each.
In four places no name is used twice: Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia.
The third table counts single words wherever they appear in a name. Valley tops it at 1,496 schools, ahead of West, North, Park, and Central. Oak appears in 438 school names, more than Franklin (326) and more than twice as many as Kennedy (184).
How the names were counted
State reporting styles hide identical names, so names are cleaned up before counting. Texas files "LINCOLN EL" and Pennsylvania files "Lincoln El Sch", and both are expanded to Lincoln Elementary. Level abbreviations (Elem, ES, MS, HS, Jr, and Sr) are spelled out in any capitalization, a trailing "School" is dropped, and South Dakota's building numbers ("Estelline Elementary - 02") are removed. Matching ignores capitalization.
The counts cover public schools in the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data for 2024-25 that reported at least one student. Closed schools and records with no enrollment are left out. All three tables are available as CSV downloads.