Why is there an upstate New York but not an upstate New Jersey, or an Oklahoma panhandle but not a Missouri panhandle? Both geographic phenomena exist in those places, but the terminology varies. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Geographic Terminology”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Good morning. My name is Wally Edelson. I’m calling from the Panhandle area in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.
Hi, Wally.
Hi, Wally.
Welcome to the show.
Hi there.
Well, what would you like to talk with us about?
Okay. On vacation, one of my aunts during the summertime would often take me and my sisters to either the Pocono Mountains or the Catskill Mountains, and she always said, we are going to take a trip to upstate New York or upstate Pennsylvania.
Now, if my grandmother was taking us for a ride to New Jersey, she never said we’re going to upstate New Jersey. She said we’re going to take a ride to North Jersey or we’re going to go to the seashore, South Jersey.
I never heard anybody say we’re going to upstate Connecticut or upstate Ohio. And I wondered why I’ve only heard the expression upstate New York over the years and or upstate Pennsylvania.
This is a really great question. And it has to do with how much we talk like our neighbors. When we come up with these regional terms, and there’s a bunch of these you might use, upstate, downstate, outstate, in the city, in the country, up north.
And all of these, depending where you are in the country, have a very specific meaning. Maybe they have no meaning or maybe they have a lot of resonance.
In New York City, if you say upstate, you generally mean north of New York City. If you’re already north of New York City, you probably mean north of where you currently are. Some people include Westchester and so forth.
But generally in New York, it’s all up the Hudson River. That’s upstate. And that belongs to New York. And it is kind of this local privilege to use upstate. And sometimes they talk about downstate. It’s a lot less common, but they do use it.
And so other states have come up with their own term. Here in California, for example, we say NorCal or NoCal. There was a failed attempt to brand the north of California as upstate a few years ago, but it didn’t stick.
And that’s what we say. We say SoCal and NorCal. That’s it. That’s how we talk about California. We don’t say upstate California. We don’t say downstate California.
Well, you say South Florida, North Florida, where you are.
Yeah.
And you say the panhandle.
Exactly. And a bunch of states have a panhandle, but it’s very particular to their own state. Oklahoma has one. Missouri has a boot heel.
And so we have these regional designations for areas, usually unofficial, that are passed from person to person, that we all understand what they mean. And, again, it’s just like local slang or it’s just like local dialects. It belongs to a place and a people.
So it’s really idiosyncratic then. Nothing consistent across the states.
No, nothing consistent. There’s no formal way to come up with these terms.
That is fascinating because what prompted me to ask that question is I was listening to your program a couple weeks ago, and a gentleman was on the air with you. He was in Manhattan, and he said, I just returned from upstate New York.
And, of course, that just put a signal for me to be brave and pick up the phone and call the station.
Right. There we go. Yeah.
Well, it wasn’t that scary when she got on, right?
No, it was easy. It was easy as a breeze. I really love the show. I’ve learned a lot about culture, about language, about regions. And I applaud you for keeping this show going. It’s fantastic.
Thank you so much, Wally.
It’s our pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for calling today.
Yeah, we appreciate your calling.
My pleasure. Bye-bye.
Bye now.
Okay, take care.
So if you move to a new place, listen to your neighbors and use whatever they use, right?
One of these shows, we’ll have to spend an hour talking about why downtown isn’t always down and uptown isn’t always up.
Yeah, let’s do that.
Yeah, and then there’s elevation, too, you know, up the road, down the road.
What are you talking about?
Well, what’s going on in your region of the country linguistically?
Let us know, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.
This reminds me of a term we used growing up in NJ, specifically in the NE part of Sussex County. The population exploded there in the 60s and 70s with new subdivisions and summer homes being converted to year-round residences, with the majority of new residents coming from the more urban areas of NJ and NYC.
The majority of the folks moving into NE Sussex (Vernon, Franklin and environs) mainly came from Bergen and Passaic Counties, and when we would visit family and friends left behind in Bergen/Passaic, we would say we were going “Down Below”. If someone lived in Wayne, Clifton, Rutherford, they lived “Down Below”. Some say that started because Sussex County was higher up and we would be going down the mountain to areas “Down Below”, but I think it’s more specific to those with access to Rt. 23 heading southeast to the dense suburbs. I don’t think people in the Southern half of the County used this term (they go across Rt. 80) and the mountain thing may have something to do with it, but someone living on top of the mountain in Vernon would never say they were going “Down Below” if visiting somewhere local that was a much lower elevation. This was always specifically used when visiting Passaic/Bergen. For example, neighbors from and visiting Staten Island or Brooklyn or Morristown never would say they were going “Down Below”. And this wasn’t just those my family or neighborhood who used this, it was most people I new who had a connection down there.
The last time I heard that expression was in the 1990s when I moved “Down Below” and someone who used to live “Down Below” asked if I was liking living “Down Below”. Since then I moved to the City, and the rest of my family moved “Down Below”, so I haven’t heard this used in 20 years!