Is it true what they say about Dixie?

[Barry Popik]

Excellent! I'll have to re-write my old "Dixie" post of three years ago.
...
Mason-Dixon line is still in play, especially with a street game that
involves lines.
...
I recently saw the VOA story (below) that credits Louisiana's "dix"
(ten) notes--a theory no one should believe. I was going to write a
letter to the VOA, but the media just doesn't issue corrections. Might
as well smash my head into the wall.
...
...
...
(Wikipedia)
The Mason–Dixon Line (or "Mason and Dixon's Line") is a demarcation
line between four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (then part of
Virginia). It was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British
colonies in Colonial America. Popular speech, especially since the
Missouri compromise of 1820 (apparently the first official usage of
the term "Mason's and Dixon's Line"), uses the Mason-Dixon line
symbolically as a cultural boundary between the Northern United States
and the Southern United States (Dixie).
...
...
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2007-10-29-voa19.cfm
Some State Nicknames are Lofty, Others Strange
By Ted Landphair
Washington, DC
29 October 2007

Americans give nicknames not just to each other but also to places.
New York City is "the Big Apple." Dallas, Texas, is "Big D." The low
desert of California and Nevada is called "The Great Basin."

And the nation's 50 states have some of the most historically
interesting nicknames.

Alabama is known as the "Heart of Dixie" because of its location in
the very middle of a row of Deep South States. "Dixie" itself is a
nickname for the American South. It got started when Louisiana printed
notes with the French word for "ten" on them. "Dix" led to "Dixie,"
and Dixie to Dixieland music. But it's Alabama, not Louisiana, that's
the "Heart of Dixie."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org