Challenge: More American Regional Terms

To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
Southerners hate to be called Yankee and deserve a term all their own.
 
Southerners hate to be called Yankee and deserve a term all their own.

Southerners have their own regional term. It's "Southerner", with a capital S. That capital S is important; a "southerner" can be from the south of anywhere, but, in a United States context, a "Southerner" is from the South.
 
Southerners hate to be called Yankee and deserve a term all their own.

Great quote. Anyway, the death of these colloquialisms was the advent of Cable news which helped create a national American language before that people in the North and south almost spoke different languages.
 

maverick

Banned
Apparently Dixie is a geographic term. I thought it'd make sense for people from Dixie to call themselves in a manner evocative of that term or something.
 
There's so much diversity across the South that trying to lump everyone between Alexandria and Miami and from Cape Fear to Lubbock together into one identity just isn't possible.

So, here in South Carolina it seems people are more likely to identify themselves by state rather than region. Thus when traveling if asked, "I love your accent, where are you from?" The usual answer is "South Carolina" or perhaps, "Charleston, South Carolina" or "the Low Country of South Carolina" (to differentiate from the Appalachian parts of the state, virtually another planet when it comes to accents), not simply "the South".
 
They're already called Dixies and Johnny Rebs.

People might come from "Dixie," but aren't ever called "dixies." The expression comes from old $10 bills distributed in the US South from the New Orleans Mint before the ACW. While the bills were officially printed in English, is was common that those bills were later overlayed with a French "dix dollars" stamp, hence the "Dixie dollar"...
 
The expression comes from old $10 bills distributed in the US South from the New Orleans Mint before the ACW. While the bills were officially printed in English, is was common that those bills were later overlayed with a French "dix dollars" stamp, hence the "Dixie dollar"...

Huh. And here I'd always thought it was named after the Mason-Dixon line, which everybody thinks separates the North from the South. (Though it doesn't, unless you count Maryland as a Southern state.)
 
Huh. And here I'd always thought it was named after the Mason-Dixon line, which everybody thinks separates the North from the South. (Though it doesn't, unless you count Maryland as a Southern state.)

Maryland used to be a very Southern state, with slaves and a Southern outlook that Lincoln just barely kept from seceding by revoking various constitutional rights.

That "dix dollars" story sounds apocryphal to me, but then again, I may have just been assuming all along that it came from the Mason-Dixon line. But "below the Macie-Dixie" line is certainly something I've heard, and it's not too much of a stretch to get to "Dixie" from that... but WP is never wrong, and it gives that story first out of three, with an even more suspect-sounding story as #2, with the Line theory as #3.

As often happens, it may be that the line and the currency both influenced the nickname. It happens sometimes that terms sort of merge together. For example the word island, etymologically, is like a horrific genetic experiment.

I think my favorite US regional term is "Yooper".
 
Colombia is named New Granada or something (or an earlier ACW) and when the South tries to secede it calls itself Columbia and Southerners are now Columbians.

More states stay in the Union and the new Southern country is dominated by states the were once apart of the Carolina Colony in some form or another so the Southerners choose the name the Republic of Greater Carolina and Southerners are now Carolinians.

Ether those or a French/Spanish/Native American word.
 
Really? I've never heard anyone called a "Dixie" and I've lived there. And Johnny Reb, while perhaps still in use, is rather outdated and antiquated. Nowadays it's just Southerner. Not very unique or special, but there ya go.

Notherners don't call each other Yankee either. While I'd agree with the claim that Dixie is used more as an adjective than a noun, I've heard it used as such.

Personally I prefer more, uh, colorful terms to describe southerners but that's just because I'm a yankee prick. :p
 
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