There doesn’t seem to be a settled counterpart to bicoastal for someone who travels between two places on the same coast. Maura in Marin County splits her time between Northern and Southern California to be near grandchildren, and bipolar isn’t the label she wants. Possibilities include Bi-Californian, bilatitudinal, para-coastal, and backup. Related travel labels include South Carolina halfback for Northeasterners who winter in Florida and then settle partway back north, and sea turtle, reportedly used in San Francisco Chinese communities for people who return to Taiwan or China after schooling or careers elsewhere. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “What Could Replace “Bicoastal” between Northern and Southern California?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Maura, and I’m in Marin County.
What’s on your mind today, Maura?
Well, I have a question because part of the time I spend in San Diego, which is Southern California, you know, and half of the time up here in Marin, Northern California. My husband and I have tried to divide our life up. We have a split life between Northern California and Southern California because of grandchildren.
Okay.
Yeah, so I’m coming up with a kind of a quiz for you or advice. You know how they say when you live on the East Coast and the West Coast, people say, well, I’m bi-coastal. I have a bi-coastal lifestyle. It sounds very cool. And so I was trying to think of how I would describe a Northern California halftime and a Southern California halftime lifestyle. And I was thinking bipolar, but it didn’t sound.
No, I don’t think you want that.
Well, that might fit.
Yeah.
I don’t know which would be the up or which would be the down. And then I thought of, you know, so no southern, northern, cow, so no cow.
So no cow.
No, wait, that sounds like a laxative.
Yeah.
You’re not a so no cow.
Not pretty. So you want to know what to call yourself because you spend time in two places in north and southern California.
Right, I’m not bi-national.
No.
You’re sort of bilatitudinal, but that…
What about bi-cal?
Bi-cal.
Bi-cal.
Bi-Californian or bi-calian?
It makes me feel like I have some deviation.
Bi-cal, bi-cal.
Or you could say duo-cal or di-cal.
Di-cal.
What about something like, I don’t know, you mentioned bi-coastal. What about para-coastal?
Para-coastal.
I’m thinking about the Greek prefix para as in parallel. So maybe para, you know, kind of up and down the coast.
Well, Mara, how do you get back and forth?
Well, we’ve been driving.
Okay, okay.
High five. There was a time when I used to fly back and forth from Kentucky to California, and I went around calling myself a jeterosexual.
Oh, yeah.
That really sounds very interesting. But it actually means somebody who can fly off to far-flung countries for shopping sprees.
That’s definitely not me.
I like the term, genderosexual.
Well, then you could say exonsexual since you’re spending all that money on gas.
I like that. This reminds me of two terms that maybe will give us some stimulus for other ideas. One is in South Carolina, they have a term called halfback. And these are people who go down to Florida for the winter, but because it’s too crowded or they don’t like it, they come halfway back up the country. These are usually people from like New Jersey and New York. And then they settle in South Carolina. So they come halfway back up.
Oh, really?
And then supposedly in San Francisco, the Chinese there have a term sea turtle, which refers to these people who came from Taiwan, went to school or started careers. And then for whatever reason, because China and Taiwan are booming, they go back. And so they call them sea turtles because sea turtles do this incredible, you know, multi-ocean migration. They swim a great many miles on their travels.
Tamara, if you could be any migratory animal, which migratory animal would you be?
Thank you, Baba Wawa. Some kind of flying bird, I think, sounds better.
A bird, a swallow, but the swallows don’t go back far enough.
To San Diego.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they might trickle down a little.
I like halfback.
Maybe you’re a backup.
A backup.
A backup.
Because you keep going backup.
Backup.
Yeah, a backup.
Well, you have gotten me even more confused.
I’m sorry.
Well, I think what you’ve done is pressed our we-have-another-hole-in-the-language-that-we-need-to-fill button. So we may have to put on the sirens and everything and get listeners to let us know what they think.
Well, the sirens are on and the flashing lights are lit. If you’ve got a suggestion from Moira, what she can call herself because she lives both in SoCal and NoCal, then by all means give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us at words@waywordradio.org.
Hey, Mara, thanks for calling.
Thank you, Martha and Grant, for your ideas and your help.
Thank you.
Happy travels.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, we’ll have to see what people have to say about that.
