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Comment by bearcobra | Hacker News Reader

Is it common to refer to Virginians as being Yankees? Growing up in New England I would have assumed they’d avoid the term by being in the Confederacy

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Per E.B. White:

"To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast."

Growing up in Vermont, this was clearly written before Red Sox fandom took over

No, they're both south of the Mason-Dixon line and Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. Texas is considered less South, culturally, than Virginia.

No. Outside DC metro, VA is the south (or Appalachian, which can be similar, but is distinct).

These days, it’s not really about the Confederacy, just culturally.

Yeah, I don't really consider virginia part of the south, culturally. Maybe it was different in the past but proximity to DC has rotted any of that away.

I can see parts of Virginia not feeling culturally like a lot of the rest of the south but I’m still intrigued by the use of yankee. Like is someone from Wyoming a yankee because they aren’t from the south or is it more cultural to you?

Nope, yankeedom as I see it is Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

There is another, semi-derisive, use in which it means any non-southerner. But that is less common and context-dependent.

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