The personal name of the legendary Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, has served as a source of inspiration for the naming of places, spaces, organizations, and institutions across the United States. According to a recent article appearing in National Geographic, evidence of this onomastic inspiration can also be found outside the USA. The human rights activist’s name can be seen in many different countries; the global MLK street count is upwards of a thousand, including a number of Martin Luther King streets in Germany, the country from which he got his name. The online article includes an interactive map that can show streets named for Dr. King around the world.
No comprehensive global index of the streets named for King exists, but there are more than a thousand entries for such eponymous streets in OpenStreetMap, the publicly maintained database where citizens around the world can add and edit road maps. This interactive map pairs those records with Google Street View images, where available, to provide a glimpse of the places where King’s name and legacy have become part of the landscape.