Quote:
Originally Posted by nn0wheremann
Dixie originally referred to $10 bank notes issued by a New Orleans bank. The word Dix was on the back, that being the French word for “ten”. The bank was solvent and strong, and its notes were popular for trade. The area where these circulated, in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Alabama, and western Florida was referred to as Dixieland, and the term took on meanings derived from the Francophone culture and music of the region. In 1760, a border dispute among British colonies was settled by a line drawn by a surveyor named Dixon, as the Mason Dixon line. Later this demarcated the slave states to the south from the non-slave states to the north. Then came the Civil War, and the marching song “Dixie” popular among Confederate soldiers. In the backlash against post-war Reconstruction the Lost Cause myth evolved and cooped Dixie as referring to the Confederacy, not just the Francophone counties of coastal Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, once known as Dixieland.
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And then, of course, we have the Mason-Dixon line, which surveyors Mason and Dixon drew to settle border disputes among Pa., Md. and Va. Everything south of Md. became shorthanded as Dixie. This naming nonsense reminds me of the old joke about Melvin Lipschitz. He was told his name was bad and he must change it. He did. To Herman. Point being, what differences does it make?