The South is Crazy

[gfish]

Found this set of US linguistic maps linked from Kuro5hin. Lots of fun, but I particularly love the map for 'What is your generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage?'.

Beyond the soda/pop issue, the fact that people use 'coke' generically always cracks me up. Does the Coca-Cola company advertise in writing journals telling people not to do this?

I'm a bit disappointed that there wasn't a map for 'Do you pronounse pin and pen the same?', just so I could prove that I'm not crazy.

Comments

[doctorpepper.livejournal.com]

Coca-Cola has a weird and twisted history with trademark law -- they're responsible for more precedent-setting cases than anyone but Disney, if I remember right. I'm trying to remember the stuff from "God, Country, and Coca-Cola," but I'm not even positive I have the correct title there. ANYway ... originally they tried to prevent people even from using "Coke" to refer to "Coca-Cola," because it gave them one more thing they had to protect. They were already fighting legal battles constantly trying to keep people from selling drinks with "Cola" or "Coca" in the title, and only succeeded with the latter (hence Pepsi-Cola surviving the legal gauntlet, even though they dropped the "cola" later).

They ended up protecting "Coke" (and trademarking it, I assume) when they realized how many soda fountains were giving people products like "Koke" and "Coak," things they bought at a discount or were given a percentage to shill, when customers asked for a "Coke." Fountain business was the vast majority of sales at the time.

I would bet that's when "coke" started to be used as a generic, particularly since a) it's a Southern thing (a real Southern thing, not a New Orleans thing), b) Coca-Cola's based in the South, and c) especially at the time, sodas sold much better down here -- we don't have the cold weather that makes us reach for a hot chocolate instead, and southerners had always been consuming more sweet foods/beverages than northerners anyway.

I forget what my point was. Oh yeah. I'd bet Coca-Cola doesn't bother putting the "please don't use coke as a generic" ads in because of the unlikelihood of anyone doing so in contexts that would jeopardize their trademark. It's such a distinctly southern thing that it wouldn't show up in anything formal, unlike using Xerox or Google as a verb or Kleenex instead of tissue.