You Say Soda, I Say Pop

While I was growing up in Michigan, the only word we used to describe a carbonated soft drink was "pop". When my older brother married a girl from the St. Louis area, I heard her refer to it as "soda", engendering funny looks. Both of these terms come from the older word, "soda pop". Later, as an adult, I briefly lived in the portion of Wisconsin where nearly everyone said "soda" (but then, they don't drink from a "water fountain"... they drink from a "bubbler"... go figure). Here in Ohio, it is mostly, "pop". Strangely enough, many folks in the South just say "coke"... even if they mean orange soda pop, or 7-Up... it doesn't matter. It's all "coke" or "co-cola" to them.

The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy website is an attempt to map the geography of the generic word for carbonated soft drinks:



Based on an unscientific survey, the blueish areas say "pop", the yellow-greenish areas say "soda" and the redish areas say "coke". The data is gathered from participants who stop by the website and indicate their term of preference, and their "hometown".

This is similar to the method used by Common Census Map Project to map the location of fans of professional sports teams.

See United Countries of Football.

Nowadays, I find I use the term "soda" more often then "pop". I'm not sure why. Perhaps it just sounds a bit more dignified.


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