POP, SODA OR COKE?

As a native Midwesterner, until about age ten I’d always considered “soda” to be a glass of cold pop topped with a scoop of ice cream. Turns out, there’s a whole other race of people out there whose generic name for carbonated beverages is “soda.” Crazy!

Meander south of the Mason-Dixon line, and it’s more likely called “Coke” (which has me curious as to whether Coke is elated or upset about being known as the generic term for all things carbonated. Probably happy. Something tells me the odds of Coke losing its brand name — say, the way Xerox and Escalator have — is pretty unlikely). At any rate, the map above was put together by a Cal Tech professor, and breaks down the pop/soda/Coke regional split. Overall tally: “soda” leads “pop” by about 45 votes out of some 16,000 cast.

Next question: is it a paper bag or a paper sack?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 7th, 2002 at 10:04 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.