Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I don't see how it can be offensive, given that it's a term the southerners themselves adopted. Might as well say it's offensive to call someone a negro, or (to revive an earlier discussion) a Jew, or an American.

There grew up an idea, during the '70s I think, that just as it's immoral to dislike someone because he's Irish-or-whatever, it's immoral also to like him for the same reason. That's just silly; the reason it's wrong to hate someone because of race/gender/etc is that it's wrong to hate, for any reason (with a few rare exceptions). Therefore there's no rationale for avoiding descriptions; you might just as well claim that I'm complimenting a Mexican, a woman or a day laborer by calling him so.

I know there are a lot of people who disagree, but I don't care: I choose to fight back against artificial over-sensitivity regarding terms by using the terms freely and without apology, defending against complaints by the simple argument "but that's the WORD for it!".

To answer your question, though, all that comes to me is "the South" and "the Southeast". "Appalachia" is not the same but there's a lot of overlap.