The rest of the country, as far as I’m aware, is divided into “The Union” and “The Confederacy” from Civil War days, and “the North” were/are Yankees and “the South” were/are Rebels. The “border states” have no specific group name that I’m aware of.
If “Northerner” is as specific as “Non-Southerner” for you, that could be construed as a synonym for “Yankee” as far as this thread is concerned.
How many different regions have specific names for you? And what are they?
If you have a reference website with this type of nomenclature, please link to it (or them).
If you care to identify your own region and how it’s referred to by people you know in your region, please share that, too.
If you were born in Texas, a Yankee is anyone who wasn’t. Damn Yankee if you moved here. There are more colorful epithets for those that moved here and placed a bumper sticker on their car reading “I’m not from Texas but I moved here as soon as I could”.
Yankee:
[ul][li]The letter between X-ray and Zulu[/li][li]A Grumman AA-1[/li][li]Someone from New England[/li][li]American colonists in the late-18th Century[/ul][/li]In that order.
As a native Southern Californian, ‘Yankee’ just isn’t in common use. ‘Yank’ is what foreigners call Americans.
I’m not aware of generic names for the regions you list. Someone from California is a Californian. Someone from Washington is a Washingtonian. I’ve heard people who live in rural areas of the Desert Southwest called ‘desert rats’, but it’s not a name for just anyone who lives in, say, Arizona. It’s generally referring to a particular lifestyle in a particular region. I’ve heard retirees in Arizona called ‘Snowbirds’, since they drive their RVs to warmer climes to spend the Winter.
A common designation in these parts is “The Tri-State area”: New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (or Pennsylvania).
In New Jersey, counties are the big thing. Ask someone where they live and it’s always “such-and-such in such-and-such county.” Weather alerts are issued for “northern Bergen County.”
As a side note, I heard a radio personality in Birmingham AL trying to refer to “the not-South” by way of the Mason-Dixon line and it was obvious he had no notion of where that line is. He was addressing someone from Arizona and used the reference as if it applied to that area. The lack of involvement in The Civil War by so many of the modern states makes the Yankee designation for regions in the west (including Alaska and Hawaii) seem inaccurate to say the least. But when a Southerner uses the blanket “Yankee” for everybody north of Kentucky and west of Texas, it seems to lack precision.
I started to address this thread to Southerners only, but decided it would be unfair. I really don’t know alternative terms for other areas of the country and wanted to get input on the subject.
If there are other terms for regions within “the South” I’d like to know about those as well.
I also think in Virginia the term Yankee gets applied more often to pushy or abrasive people who happen to be from the NorthEast. If you’re a sweet little old lady from NJ you probably won’t be referred to as a Yankee.
Except for the sometime inclusion of Delaware, the “border states” were largely Southern in sympathy (pretty solidly in Maryland and Kentucky, less so in Missouri but still tilting South).
People in all these states have been known to refer to those north of their own as Yankee.
Yes. The unambiguous Yankee states to me are Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the states north and east thereof.
That squares with my own perceptions. However, West Virginia’s existence is based on not following Virginia into the Confederacy, right? To me, WV is “southern” in culture but not in a non-Yankee way, if that makes any sense.
I’ve heard Snowbirds applied to people who winter (or retire) in Florida, too.
Some time ago I tried to get some discussion on regions as opposed to states for where people feel somewhat connected geographically. The predominant feeling I got from that exercise was that the majority of the responders didn’t have such a “regional” feeling.
Getting the names for the residents of particular states, especially by people not living in (or near) that state, was enough of a strain for most.
The issue was addressed to some extent in a recent “Middle Tennessee” thread with mixed results. My conclusion is that people are very local in their outlook or very “one world” with not a lot in between.
I’m not overly puzzled by the response (or lack of it) to this thread.
I think the term “yankee” has mostly fallen out of use with Generation Y and younger.
With my generation (Generation X) the term was used mostly playfully to refer to outsiders. Any American from a non-Southern state with a non-Southern accent. Rarely was the term used seriously, except in moments of extreme agitation with a particularly abrasive Northerner.
With my dad’s generation (WWII generation) it was often a serious epithet but used playfully when addressing “yankee” friends.
With the generation before my dad’s, I’m guessing playful use was pretty rare.
Which is why Yankee-haters from northern states might bristle at the appellation.
Complexity ensues when you consider that Yankee is an established if somewhat outmoded term used by New Englanders (who are likely to be Red Sox fans) to refer to themselves.
Belligerent use by southerners to refer to northerners appears to be dying out due to population movement, loss of old-time historic resentments etc.
