Heart of Dixie Revisited: An Update on the Geography of Naming in the American South

Abstract

This research revisits and updates John Shelton Reed's "Heart of Dixie," a classic in the fields of cultural geography and southern studies. Reed mapped the perceptual or vernacular boundaries of the American South by examining the naming patterns of businesses and organizations listed in metropolitan telephone directories. First published in 1976, his study identified a strong southeastern regional pattern in the ratio of nonresidential establishments that used the word "Dixie" in their name versus those using the label "American." Later, in a 1990 update, Reed and colleagues found a dramatic shrinkage in the core area of Dixie naming, which they attributed to the waning of sectional feelings among southerners. We revisit this seminal study in light of recent struggles over identity in the American South, particularly between Black and White southerners, and recent changes in the region's place-name landscape. Three new trends are observable within the South's geography of naming: de-Confederatization, African Americanization, and re-Confederatization. We replicated Reed's methodology and generated an updated rendering of the "Heart of Dixie" using current data collected from the Internet, revealing a de-Confederatization in the naming of businesses and organizations (although wholesale, regionwide declines in references to Dixie—both in absolute and relative terms—are not evident). In addition to remapping the boundaries of Dixie as Reed defined it, we suggest that the study of southern naming should go beyond simply analyzing geographic patterns and move toward an investigation of the "politics of naming." Such an approach involves examining the social and political relations that underlie naming as people attempt to redefine and reclaim the region symbolically.

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