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This may be an experiment in regional language, but I have to ask-- Where do you live?
I am from Indiana, which we have always called 'the midwest'. In this area when someone says the midwest it includes the following states; Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.
I was at work and received a call from a gentleman in Iowa who claimed to be in the midwest. Around here, that would be called part of the plains states rather than the midwest.
People in Florida outside the panhandle would never think of calling themselves southerners, while Kentucky seems to be split as to part of the midwest or the south. Californians are obviously in the west but don't think of themselves as part of the western states unless you are splitting it east and west down the middle. It may be like asking where the tri-state area is, but here it is;
What do you call your region, and why?
I live in Arizona, and it's definitely the Southwest (or the "Desert Southwest" if a more specific name is needed).
My dividing line is based on a notebook I had for school as a child. The cover had a laminated wrap-around map of the United States, and I decided that the difference between East and West was the difference between the front and back covers of that notebook; the states that covered the spine of the notebook (the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the central portion of Texas) were neither.
It's interesting that you make a point of excluding Iowa. A survey was once done that asked people all over the country what states they considered to be part of the "Midwest". New Yorkers thought Ohio (which people on the west coast considered "Eastern") qualified, while the Californians thought Kansas and Missouri epitomized the Midwest (those on the eastern seaboard thought Missouri was Southern, Kansas Western). The only thing that everyone agreed on was that Iowa was in the Midwest. And that includes Iowans themselves.
Phil said:
This may be an experiment in regional language, but I have to ask-- Where do you live?
I am from Indiana, which we have always called 'the midwest'. In this area when someone says the midwest it includes the following states; Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.
I was at work and received a call from a gentleman in Iowa who claimed to be in the midwest. Around here, that would be called part of the plains states rather than the midwest.
People in Florida outside the panhandle would never think of calling themselves southerners, while Kentucky seems to be split as to part of the midwest or the south. Californians are obviously in the west but don't think of themselves as part of the western states unless you are splitting it east and west down the middle. It may be like asking where the tri-state area is, but here it is;
What do you call your region, and why?
I live in Eureka, California -- the "real" northern California. San Francisco, the place that has been designated by the world as "Northern California" is five hours south! At one time, somebody tried "upstate" for our area, but it didn't stick. The best way to describe it to folks is to say, "Just south of Oregon." Another unusual thing, I've learned since I've been here -- after growing up in Southern California where county lines were only lines on a map -- is that the communities in our area define ourselves by our county, Humboldt, more often than our city.
Ron Draney said:
It's interesting that you make a point of excluding Iowa. A survey was once done that asked people all over the country what states they considered to be part of the "Midwest". New Yorkers thought Ohio (which people on the west coast considered "Eastern") qualified, while the Californians thought Kansas and Missouri epitomized the Midwest (those on the eastern seaboard thought Missouri was Southern, Kansas Western). The only thing that everyone agreed on was that Iowa was in the Midwest. And that includes Iowans themselves.
Ron, do you by any chance have any idea who did this survey? I would love to see it.
Whenever I have done an informal poll in this area, the Midwest is bordered on the west by the Mississippi river, the east by the Alleghenies, the south by the Ohio river, and the north by the great lakes. I have never really thought about Wisconsin or Minnesota as part of the Midwest, but culturally I would think they would have more in common with the area described than the plains states.
If I had to make a regional name map, it would probably include New England (extending down to New York), the Midatlantic states (New York down to Maryland and west to the mountains), the Old South (Virginia to Georgia and extending west to the Mississippi). Then the Midwest, The Lake states (Wisconsin and Minnesota), The Plains states (everything between the Mississippi and the Rockies-including Idaho- and North of the Iowa/Missouri border), the Southwest (south of that, also extending west to the Rockies-including Nevada and Arizona), and then the West coast states (Washington, Oregon, and California)
My map may be biased. I am a genealogist and historian, and am a little more sensitive to cultural groups than most. The cultural shift between the woodland/farmland areas east of the Mississippi and the ranching/farmland areas of the plains strike me as a little too dissimilar.
Sorry, it's been a number of years since I came across the bit about Iowa. Probably mentioned in passing in some mass-market sociology book (which means the original observation would be in some other book that I've never seen).
Have you read Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America? The author breaks up all of North America (not just the US) along socio-culturo-economic lines, ignoring state and national boundaries almost entirely (of his "nine nations", only two are entirely confined to a single country). There's a brief overview of it at Wikipedia.
Heinlein used a similar imaginary map in the "Friday" series of novels, mentioning in passing the "balkanization of North America". In his version, the boundaries had become official, and you needed a passport to travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, for example.
I believe the term "Midwest" is derived, in part, from the fact that the region used to be known as the Northwest Territories from 1787-1803 when the Mississippi River was the western limit of the US. The Northwest Territories included Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota. West of the river was Louisiana which was French, then Spanish, then appropriated by Napoleon to sell to the US for some quick cash. As western expansion continued in the early 19th century, this region was called the "OLD Northwest Territories" even after states had formed. The Midwest is closer than the far west or the NEW Northwest Territories of say Oregon, Washington, etc. and has come to include Iowa, Nebraska, etc. because they meet the geographic criteria, if not the original membership.
I'm currently in Brooklyn, NY, which I would call the "Northeast", or the "Mid-Atlantic", or the "Eastern Seaboard". I spent most of my childhood in Georgia, which I would now refer to as in the "Deep South". Interestingly, if you were to ask me to name a Midwestern state, the first two that would spring to my mind would be Wisconsin and Minnesota!
As for Ohio/Kentucky/Illinois, etc., I had an Uncle who would always refer to that part of the country as "Pennsyltucky". I've never heard anyone else use that, but I've always loved it.
I've lived in Columbus, OH for the past two years, but I'm from Huntington, NY. I like my neighborhood in Columbus a lot.
The general idea back home is that the Midwest is the area without a proper beach, and isn't the south or west.
What are the names of those states again? They all have too many vowels.
Where's Missouri?
Dude, it's where you start when you play Oregon Trail.
Oh right, It's 50 lbs of food and two broken axles away from Oregon.
Well, it keeps it cheap for us schlub students, anyway.
I grew up in MN and have spent the past 10 years in WI. I've always considered this the Midwest. To me, Ohio is too far east. In the popular media, I often see/hear MN and WI referred to as the midwest. I will say that the areas I grew up in meet the criteria of being bordered by the Mississippi and Great Lakes.
I grew up in the south, and we had a whole different way of ordering the country. It's not that we didn't recognize the midwest as an idea, but the broad midwest (every state named so far) plus the northeast and the mid-Atlantic--basically everything north of the Mason-Dixon line that wasn't "the West" was "the North." We may have recognized the plains, although I tend to think that we would have included even Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas in "the North." I remember having conversations with friends the summer I went to camp in northern Indiana in wheich I referred to their region as "the North" and they corrected that it was "the Midwest." We definitely don't consider ourselves Confederate-sympathizers and one parent's family is from the northeast. It's just the way we grew up.
After the plains, everything else that wasn't the south was the southwest or the west. We sort of had distinctions for sub-regions of the south, but in retrospect I realize that the former Confederate states were recognized as a unit. We even had trouble categorizing border states like MO and KY.
I realized how much my view had changed, having since lived in IN and PA, when I had a conversation with my sister. I was suggesting doing Christmas at a friend's house in the Adirondacks, which I referred to as the "North Country," a common term for that area. She replied that we had just done Christmas there the year before--in Philadelphia!
I've always considered this the Midwest. To me, Ohio is too far east. In the popular media, I often see/hear MN and WI referred to as the midwest. I will say that the areas I grew up in meet the criteria of being bordered by the Mississippi and Great Lakes.
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I'm from southwestern Canada, but in the US I always say I'm from the Northwest. Geographically the two are identical; culturally they're somewhat similar.
And then there's the Tip o'Texas, which is, which is, ... uh... the Tip o'Texas I guess. It's unlike anywhere else in Texas, or in the US for that matter. And the world's best grapefruits come from there (Texas Ruby Reds). You haven't lived till you've eaten one.
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