I found this at Beau Weston's site (source here). I'm a soda drinker in a pop world. How about you? Especially those of you who live where "other" is the preferred lingo.
Pop, Coke, or Soda?
Comments
11 responses to “Pop, Coke, or Soda?”
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Even though I live in a heavy pop area in Michigan, I’m a heavy coke man, if I drink this kind of beverage at all- actually not all that much.
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I’m a “coke” person living in a pop world. Fortunately I have well-developed defense of the South’s linguistic practice, so it’s not too much a problem. I had a friend who moved from a pop to soda area around Oregon who was mercilessly jeered at in high school till she switched over to the dominant terminology. Much as I dislike “pop”, that just ain’t right.
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I’ve seen the jeering about “pop” when I lived in Philly for awhile. It was considered hick. I grew up (OK and later KS)using pop and coke interchangeably but I think it was a combination of living for a time in the northeast and my St. Louis friends that brainwashed me into soda. I hear all varieties used here in Kansas City, MO.
One of the fascinating aspects of the map is that green circle around St. Louis (west MO and east IL). The soda black hole. -
Check out the map’s dividing line between NE IL and SE WI. We moved from Pop-land Chicago to Soda Nation outside Milwaukee a few years ago. Our ingrained use of the word ‘pop’ was a dead give-away that we were Flatlanders (the least obscene of the nicknames WI residents have for their southern neighbors).
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It is interesting that the two “soda” Midwest enclaves are Milwaukee and St. Louis. It makes me wonder if name usage in these locales was related to beer production. I can’t come up with any other good links.
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Having grown up in greater Boston, soft drinks will always be “tonic” to me — and “Moxie” is the best! (it’s the annual Moxie festival in Lisbon Falls, ME, this week.) Soda is just that — soda water, or seltzer. Pop is another name for your father. Coke is a brand name.
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Thanks Paul! I knew there was another term from the northeast but I couldn’t think of it. I think tonic is it.
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I’m a “coke” person (Northeast Georgia) living in the “soda” world (Westchester suburbs of NYC), but what astonishes me is how many people assume that I grew up saying “pop.” No one, and I mean no one, in the Appalachian foothills of Georgia says “pop.” Why do people think that we do? My theory is that it all has to do with “The Andy Griffith Show,” where they always said “pop.” Of course, no one says “pop” in Mt. Airy, NC; they say “coke.” But using a trademarked name would have been a problem for a TV show in the 1960s.
Thanks for digging this up, Michael. Hope to see you at the ACT 3 conference. -
All expect to be there. It sure was a great time last year.
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I’m a ‘fizzy’ drink man myself
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Fizzy is another one I’ve heard and forgotten. Is that northeast somewhere?
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