Pop? Soda? Coke? Which one where?
 

Pop? Or soda? Or Coke? Oh my! Have you ever been misunderstood?

I was a part of a recent conversation that turned to this ever so fascinating topic. After a few minutes of discussion, one of the guests retrieved his laptop to show us the following map. Who knew that somebody had actually made quite an in-depth study of this -- by county even.

So if you are having kind of a slow evening, you could liven things up by opening this thrilling link to a map that says it all. -- Not only does it say it all about what is said where, I think it also speaks volumes about whoever made this thing. But......

I have to admit, I think it's kind of fun to look at. (And NO it was NOT an English major who showed us the map. It was a science guy. HAH!)

And what's up with Wisconsin?

http://www.popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html

Boomer the Easily Amused

Those mid-westerners crack me up with their "pop". In KY where I was born it's all Coke!

Most of MA calls it tonic.

Pop cracks me up too. Atlanta is the home of Coca-Cola, so everybody there who doesn't say Coke moved there from somewhere else. :laugh:

Actually, soda sounds funny to us too. The only thing you can call it that doesn't make us laugh is... Pepsi. :throwtomatoes:

Here in Central Pa it's Pop.

Coke or Soft Drink in Virginia and South Carolina
PTurner - I agree - Pop really cracks me up!!;)

The kind of soda pop I like is Coke.

raynan- what part of MA are you from? In my whole life in Mass I would never call a "soft drink" tonic, unless it was tonic water. Generically it would always be "soda", never "pop". Specifically it might be Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, etc. I'm surprised that other areas might use "coke" as a generic.

Originally from Somerville, husband from Quincy but when we moved to Attleboro (on the RI border) they called it pop.

Well, I am from a coal mining town in Lynch, Ky---on the other side of Black Mountain from Appalachia, Va--and it was Pop----Not soda, Coke, cola but Pop. The link with map shows my area and Pop is what it was called.

I give up - What's up with Wisconsin? Was this a cheese quiz?


I did note that the red county in Nevada is the result of only one vote in the entire county.


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From North Missouri
 

While the map showed a gray area where I am from, I would have to say from my town it was 100% pop. Course when you come from a town of 156 people there's not a lot of variety. LOL

The lack of the consideration of "tonic" in Massachusetts, makes me suspect the validity of the whole survey. It makes no difference how detail the survey is if the details are crap.

Yoda

All I know is that when my ex-husband ordered Scotch & Soda in Wisconsin, he got Scotch & 7 Up (more than once)!. Be very specific - Scotch & CLUB soda, if you please. Does anyone drink Scotch & 7 Up? I guess it's better than Scotch & Coke.

Once we had a cocktail party and went thru 2 bottles of brandy - everyone up there drinks Brandy Old Fashioneds - sweet or sour - I think sweet was Brandy & 7 Up, can't remember what sour was.
I'm pretty much a wine and beer girl now, much less complicated.

Hi sandybill2,

I know your territory, or close to it -- Cumberland. I have not been there though for decades.

When I looked at the map and saw how Kentucky split into east and west, I wondered if it was possibly because many from that area of Kentucky came to Ohio for more job opportunities after WWII.

I can remember even in the 1960's, there was an effect on the traffic patterns which were heavier on Friday evenings and Sunday nights, as people went back and forth from Cincinnati homes and jobs to "home." Also Michigan says "pop" and many went there from Eastern Kentucky to work in the automobile industry.

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And hi chuckinca,

That thing about Wisconsin, the pop-soda divide. -- I bet it has something to do with who settled where, but I don't know anything about Wisconsin. So I was wondering what the pattern was and thought there might be someone among us here on TOTV who could explain it.

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And hi Pturner,

I had always wondered about that Coke thing and if it might be because of the Atlanta connection like you said. And now, you are the perfect person to ask this other question -- what do you do when you want to order 7-Up? Somebody once told me that they called it white Coke. Have you ever heard that?

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Oh my goodness. All of you, please forgive me. I think I am turning into Cliff Clavin right here before your eyes.:22yikes:

Boomer

In Eastern Mass it was tonic (not so much now) and in RI it was and still is soda. :beer3:

Boomer---As you know Lynch is 5 miles from Cumberland. Benham was between Lynch and Cumberland. Lynch was a coal mining town developed by United States Steel, Benham was developed by International Harvester---Cumberland was "town"---where we went to get our "pop"--as that is where all the stores where.. I lived with my grandparents (my mother's parents) Grandfather was a coal miner. Went to Richmond, Va. after graduating from High School in '64--where I stayed until our move to the Villages in 2007. My mother also was raised there---she went to Detroit during the War to work in the factories.

Yup. In Endicott NY where I grew up, it was soda. In western NY, it is pop.
Also, I was told we are the only place in the counrty where Pepsi is king and Coke is a distant 2nd.....

Frank

Born in RI - lived all over RI - moved to southern MA and not once did I or any of my friends or anyone I knew in RI call it pop or tonic. It was soda.

Now, I do know people from the Sommerville/Dorchester areas near Boston and parts of the South Shore that call it tonic.

I do know people that call any version of cola Coke even though it says Pepsi right on the can!!

I loved those little grocery stores in Cumberland. There were two within walking distance and sometimes I was allowed to get something extra when I was sent on an errand to the grocery. And sometimes it was a "pop" which was a really, really big deal in those days.

Such a talk we could have. I am wondering if we ever played together in the summertime when I visited there. I could not wait to get back and look up the friends from the summer before -- even though they did make fun of the way I talk....

I still remember those words, "Listen to Boomer. She sure does talk funny. C'mon Boomer, talk! Talk!" -- Ohmygosh! sandybill! Was that you!

And....those pops were often RC. (And I still have not stopped talking.)

Boomer

Growing up in Boston, we never heard a soft drink referred to as a "pop" or "soda". If you wanted a soft drink, you wanted a "tonic". It was only after I entered the military did I, to my surprise, learn about the term a "pop" or a "soda". It is interesting how much product naming changes from one part of our country to the other. Another example is bowling. I grew-up knowing only one kind and that was candlepen bowling.

I should have known something was up when I was down south and a military friend suggested we go bowling and grab a couple of pops along the way.

Eastern Wisconsin and Eastern Missouri are adjacent to large beer producing centers of Milwaukee and St Louis and both say soda. New York and Eastern Pennsylvania are large beer producing areas around NYC and Philly and say soda. All these areas have large German populations.

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We lived in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia for most of our lives and everyone there asks for a "drink". You NEVER hear Pop, and once in a while you hear Soda.

If your friend is stopping in the convenience store, you ask them to get you a "drink" and then you specify the brand name. Or if you are the one going to the store, or the fridge, you offer to get your friend a drink. "Drink" always means soft drink, unless you are going out to the clubs and bars.

Yes, sorry Dan. I meant to say tonic in my last post. I just changed it.

There are lots of other strange local words in RI such as 'cabinet'. No it's not a piece of furniture - it's an ice cream shake/frappe.

Growing up in eastern Virginia it was always soft drink which usually meant Coke. And if someone wanted to offer an alcoholic drink in their home it was always Hiball or beer. Or do you want a soft drink or coffee? I never heard soda until I moved to NY.

In California, it was soda (Coke for me). In Kentucky (Harlan, Boomer), it was pop (usually RC). In Georgia, it was Coke-Cola, regardless of the brand. Overseas, it was strictly by brand name when shopping/drinking on a military post. In Europe and in the Middle East and Northern Africa, they did have soft drinks of a sort, but they were usually a fruity drink. I really don't remember getting a soft drink in the Far East unless on a base.

My logic worked as follows: Pop was something some people called their father or grandfather; Coke was a brand name and not to be confused with that disgusting soft drink called Pepsi; soda was the generic name for a soft drink; if you wanted to be 100% safe, you asked for the brand name or a soft drink or fizzy, flavored water. Man, traveling a lot can make the rules confusing!

Growing up in NH it was always tonic. I remember one of my first ventures outside the area and when I asked for tonic in a drug store was sent to the pharmacist. They didn't have a clue what I wanted. Finally found it and it was soda.

Not only are words different by locale, but how they are pronounced is also very different. Try asking for those light colored pants that begin with a K. Or talk about the slope leading down from the highway or down to a stream. And exactly what do you call a small flowing water way? And there are so many more.

I'm really wondering how Boomer's conversation ventured into the pop-soda thing. I bet she really knows how to liven up a holiday party.

And I would never have suspected an English major in the mix.

In Cincinnati a soda is ice cream, flavored syrup, and carbonated water.

And, btw, I am now wondering what you get in Massachusetts if you order a gin and tonic. Could it end up like what Ohiogirl said happened with the scotch and soda ordered in Wisconsin?

(Red, with as many places as you have lived, I bet you could write a dictionary of colloquialisms.)

I think colloquialisms are interesting and probably could talk about them for an inordinately long time. -- Uh oh, I had a great night's sleep, but it looks like I am still Cliff Clavin this morning. -- Hey, would Cliff Clavin have called it tonic? (I think he always ordered beer.)

Boomer

PS: Hi l2ridehd, before I hit submit, I looked at the bottom of the page and saw your post. And now I am curious about everything you said in the second part.

Addendum: Hey, Mr. Tony, Mr. Admin, Sir: I saw that. Besmirching English majors again, huh. I'm telling you true, it was a science major who brought out that map. Meteorology to be exact. So there!

In CT, it was always soda and when I lived in Alabama all kinds of soda's were referred to as "drinks".

It is pop.

Which amused the heck out of our Austrian house guest this past month. I couldn't talk him into any ice in his pop either.

A Coke is still a Coke and it still tastes the same regardless of what you call it.

Here in snowy Long Island its soda.

In Yonkers, New York, it was always called soda. Coke was always coke and Pepsi was alway Pepsi. That later moprhed into a soft drink.

In 81 when I moved to Cleveland, I found out they called it pop. Confusing to me because in the old neighborhood, if someone said, "lets go for a couple of pops", that meant going for some alcoholic beverages. Usually a couple of hundred, as there was a lot of heavy drinking going on and we only had to walk a couple of blocks to and from the bar. :beer3:

Cuff links were used as curb feelers. :laugh:

Mother and father owned a lucheonette where we made ice cream floats and egg creams with seltzer water, (not called tonic water). My mother made sandwiches on wedges, not heros, grinders, or submarines)

Not sure how reliable the statistics in this 2002 map really are.
 

http://popvssoda.com:2998/

The map maker's methodolgy looks quite a bit off by just relying on people on the Internet filling out the survey. And it looks like most of these respondents were college students. Seems to be you would get a different result going up each ten year age bracket, i.e. the answers would be quite different among teens and college age students to 40, 50 and 60 year olds.

Um... I've heard of white coke. Never tried it. But Boomer, um, I don't think it refers to 7-Up. (If it referred to a soft drink in ATL it would have to be Sprite anyway.)

But... um... white coke, um... I'm not an English major, mind you, but I think it refers to... a white powdery substance. :22yikes:

In the southern parts of Africa the choice is "dark fizzy drink" or "light fizzy drink". Eastern PA was "soda" while Denver was "pop".
Should we continue this fun banter and I'll ask the question: "Dressing," "Filling" or "Stuffing?"

Stuffing in MA.

Unless it's Sprite - can't call that a Coke:)

Stuffing. Dressing is what goes around windows.

Also, Coke or Pepsi? The lines are blurred now for me, since I really like Pepsi Max, (it has ginseng in it), but I also like Coke Zero. Also, A&W is the best Root Beer, "Mug" brand is like dog drool.

Too bad you can't get Cheerwine in Florida. That is a Dr Pepper-like pop they have in the Carolina's

Frank