In England’s history, there have certainly been some well-loved and, well, not-so-acclaimed rulers in the monarchy’s lineage. Perhaps a good indication of who fared best in the public eye is the number of pubs named after them.
A reddit user on the r/dataisbeautiful subreddit sorted British pubs the rulers they were named after, posting the results as an infographic. As expected, there’s definitely some disparities between the country’s historic rulers.
The creator, “spicer2,” states in a comment that they utilized an existing dataset titled “Every Pub in England” by Rachel Tatman to compile the rankings. They manually filtered the data by rulers’ names — excluding any vague monarch references such as “king” or “queen” — conducting extra research as needed.
As several monarchs hold the same or similar names, such as the many regnal numbered Georges and Elizabeths, the creator says they utilized historic photos and Google StreetView to ensure the pubs were categorized correctly.
Queen Victoria is overwhelmingly popular among pub names, as the infographic shares that 222 British locations are named after the 19th century monarch. Following Victoria is William IV with a slightly less impressive total of 62, followed by 50 pubs named after George III.
More than a few sovereigns aren’t shown in the ranking at all. Edward the Elder, Henry II, Edward VIII, and many others simply didn’t make the cut.
While the infographic provides an interesting look into British pubs’ namesakes, it isn’t without error. As commenters on the post state, the chart is erroneously named “UK Monarchs with the most pubs named after them,” but only includes English pubs. The original user also states that the count includes social club bars, sports clubs, and other venues — rather than strictly pubs.
While Britain’s current representative ruler Elizabeth II is said to enjoy four drinks a day, no English pubs are currently named after her. Sorry, queen!
