RANKED: Commodities that are added to mining company names

Most mining companies have the word "gold" in their name, according to a study of Mining Intelligence company names.

There are over 1,000 mining companies that use a variant of the word "gold" in their moniker. Some examples would be Barrick Gold (TSE:ABX) or Condor Gold (TSE:COG).

Data comes from Mining Intelligence, which tracks over 13,000 mining companies.

The second and third most popular commodities to add to a company name were "coal" followed by "copper".

Adding a commodity to a name is a handy way to signal to investors what is the company's focus; however most companies opt not to attach a commodity to their name.

With the spike in battery-material prices, there may seem there are more companies popping up using some variant of "cobalt", "lithium", "nickel" or "graphite" in their names, but there hasn't be any recent surge. In 2017 there were eight companies that formed or got renamed that had "cobalt", "lithium", "nickel" or "graphite" in their name, which is about the yearly average over the past four years.

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