“It’s a Southern Thing” has many hilarious takes on the Southern United States. “Double names” is one of them. Enjoy.
Then tell us a local or regional idiosyncrasy in your part of the world that may sound “foreign” to a visitor.
For example, in Arizona we know how to pronounce Mogollon Rim. Do you?
(If you cannot see the video in your email newsletter, please click through to the site to view it.)
Don’t Wait for Retirement
I went out east to Indiana,
met fiance, to keep it real,
then picked up verbal banana,
and promptly slipped upon the peel
when ignorance I thus announced
and fell headlong upon my sword
when I blithely did mispronounce
an honoured guarded hallowed word.
Beyond pardon was my sin,
worse than an attempted to usure,
when I placed an extra “i” within
that defining elocution, Hoosier,
and in penance for this faux pax baddie,
I bought a shirt marked “Hoosier Daddy”.
I was rolling on the floor! ‘Tis SO true! I grew up in Florida as Terri Lynn, moved to Pennsylvania and became Terri, and now use Terri Lynn again because there is another Teri in my writing group. But whenever I hear the name, I look over my shoulder, thinking I’m hearing my mom calling me. Thanks for the laugh and the nostalgia. Great way to start the morning.
Oh, my. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Mogollon Rim. Thank you.
I’m laughing, too. We moved to Georgia from Pennsylvania, and I binge watched these It’s True Y’Alls when I kept making chicken soup for my neighbor because she said her husband was “just so ill.” She finally explained that it meant he was crabby and in a bad mood. They liked the soup.
How funny! Ill. I might start using that.
“Oh, so you’re Dr. Jacobs-Waters?” 😀
I’m originally from Wyoming, and I can safely say, there are no creeks in the entire state. There are, however, numerous “cricks.”
How fun! Can certainly apply to writing.
Has anyone else noticed that it seems to be Terri/Terry Day?
Signed,
Terry
My grandson’s name is William Evan. He played on a youth basketball team that had another William and another Evan. Now he goes by Biscuit.
I live in Northern California. The true Northern California, which is north of San Francisco and Sacramento. This is where True Californians use the term “I live in California”, not “I’m from Cali”. Cali is a city in Columbia in South America not in North America.
Every time I hear someone say that it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. Hmmmm…did I just age myself by mentioning an archaic teaching staple?
Loved the video and everyone’s comments. So funny! I’m from Arizona, so it was fun to see the Mug-gee-on Rim reference. I now live in Alaska where there’s a mixture of native and Russian influence in many names. When we first started regularly visiting Alaska, my instincts were all wrong when it came to names like Kuskokwim, Kasilof, Soldotna, Nenana, Anaktuvuk, and Unalakleet. I kept accenting the wrong syllables of words that were new to me. It can still be a challenge. Like when they reverted the city of Barrow back to it’s original native name of Utqiagvik, it took about five times listening to it to be able to say it. It’s Oot-kee-AHG-vik. The others are pronounced, KUSK-ko-kwim, Ka-SEE-loff, Soul-DOT-nah, Nee-NAH-nah, An-ak-TOO-vik, and EW-nah-lah-kleet, which is locally slurred to, EW-nah-kleet). 🙂
Moving near Gettysburg we quickly learned it’s “get-iss-burg” not “get-ees-burg” . Easy way to identify tourists.
Loved this, and it’s so true. When I moved from Illinois to Florida, it baffled me that so many people had two names for a first name. Not only that but some of the names were those like Billy Bob, Bubby Lee, etc. Talk about culture shock. Of course, I did name my daughter Heatherlyn, but I made it one name. And yes she does have a middle name. I just couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted her middle name to be Lynn or Cary. It was a solution to the problem, and I’ve had compliments on her name ever since. LOL
After moving to the south, I realized I was the only one to refer to where I came from as “up north.” Everyone else said, “Oh, you’re from the north, or yankee land.” I firmly denied the “yankee land” because to us northerners, Yankees came from the east coast.
Now that I live in Texas, I’m using the term “y’all” instead of “you all.” Love it.
I live in Australia, where dozens of words and names (not just ‘brewski’) are slanged with suffixes. You’ve all heard of grill = barbie, but maybe not petrol station = servo, liquor store = bottle-o, carpenter = chippie, and just to mix it up, sandwich = sanga. Cockney-era Aussieisms have fallen out of use (I haven’t heard ‘fair dinkum’ in a good twenty years). But John/Jonathan is usually Jono, David is Davo, Robinson tends to be Robbo, Mary is Mazza … and then we get even lazier with Beck, Liz, Jus, Marnz, Aimz … the Bible was right, we are a peculiar people 🙂
I’m from Ohio, so I feel left out of the double-names, even though I was raised in Florida. Is it too late for me to go with, oh, I don’t know, Sheri Lynn? Hysterical posting, BTW.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Fun Fridays post on February 24, 2023. The humor and creativity were refreshing and provided a nice break from the usual content. The format of the post was also well-organized and easy to follow. One suggestion for future posts would be to incorporate more interactive elements, such as polls or quizzes, to further engage readers. Overall, keep up the great work!
How fascinating! I did grow up with one person who had a double name and she moved here from … somewhere else. I thought the stern lectures from her mother when I dropped the second name were odd. Now I get stern looks from her if I include it, ha! We have many regional names that link to our local tribes and of course we know how to pronounce them! Yakima, Wenatchee, Peshastin, Snoqualmie, Issaquah, Tacoma. I had no idea that this was unique to the Northwest until others started explaining their difficulty in pronouncing such names. What? Every part of our country has native people who already named everything. Does no one else use these names??? Sure, we don’t always use the proper names for the proper place. Tacoma was the mountain not the city, but at least the names are used and used proudly. And yes, using the local names would have been received much better by local tribes if this had been accompanied by respect and honesty by the settlers who chose those names. Our area was also fraught with humanitarian crimes as well as cool naming choices. I was also told that, “People in the Washington dress like they’re about to go hiking, even if they are not about to go hiking.” This was said as though it were problematic??? With so many amazing trails, mountains, lakes, and wonders right outside the back door one could be hiking at a moment’s notice. You should dress for the task, just in case and also keep a well-stocked day pack with “the ten essentials” in your car at all times just in case you get stuck on the mountain. If you do not know the ten essentials, please learn them before moving to the Northwest. Say yes to adventure! Dress to hike, my friends, dress to hike! And it is a cougar … that large tawny cat that hunts deer and slinks through the woods with quiet power and grace, it is a cougar folks, a cougar!
In West Virginia, we’re in between the north and south. When I’m in the south, people say I have a northern accent, and when I’m in the north, they say I have a southern accent. And culturally, different parts of West Virginia vary widely. My mother grew up in the capital city of Charleston and she did not tolerate slang. But a large family from a “holler” (a secluded valley with dirt roads and few people) moved into our neighborhood when I was in grade school. I picked up some of their slang and sometimes playfully used “ain’t” just to hear my mother correct me. (I was a little ornery, or “on’ry.”)
In my area of central WV, we ate hot dogs with chili and slaw, which supposedly originated at a hot dog joint near Charleston during the depression. I now live in the northeastern part of the state, close to Baltimore and DC, and people here think slaw on hot dogs sounds disgusting, but to me it tastes like home.
Hi
I live in South Africa. Here we have names like Mpho with a silent h.
I enjoyed the video. Lovely blog.