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  • From: Paul Jones <pjones AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [internetworkers] Souf Cackalacky reports on cackalacky
  • Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2003 22:12:35 -0400 (EDT)

A while back this list and Tom Beckett in particular was asked about the
origin of cackalacky (or cackalack or cackalackie). There is a lack of
knowledge of cackalacky, a sort of cackalack black hole.
TheState.com which calls itself South Carolina's Home Page while being
hosted at a URL of www.duluthsuperior.com reported on July 30:

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/state/2003/08/06/business/6415688.htm

Posted on Wed, Jul. 30, 2003

'Cackalacky' trackers lack clues to its origin
By CLARE RAMSEY
Staff Writer

Page Skelton named his hot sauce Cackalacky because it is made in the
Carolinas.

How that word came to represent the region has stumped Skelton and
scholars alike.

"All we can do is guess," said Connie Eble, an English professor at
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Despite its old-timey sound, Cackalacky has been popping up in some modern
places: hip-hop songs, Internet chats, local radio stations, Midlands-made
T-shirts, as well as Skelton's Chapel Hill hot sauce.

"This seems to be a word that has come into its own recently," said Eble,
who studies contemporary American English vernacular, or our everyday
speech.

Why Cackalacky is catching on is as much of a mystery as its roots, Eble
said.

The word has no standard spelling or official origin, but a lot of people
use it and pronounce it the same way.

Cackalacky is a slang term for the Carolinas, sometimes following "North"
or "South."

For example, one might say, "I'm from way down in North Cackalacky," or
"My family lives in South Cackalacky."

And while there are lifelong Carolinians who can't recall having heard the
term, others say it is as common as sweet tea, boiled peanuts and
barbecue.

Cackalacky's users defy class, race, age and geography classifications.
Black, white. Old and young. Carolinians and out-of-staters. All kinds of
people say they drop the name now and then.

Hot sauce maker Skelton said Carolinians either get excited by the sauce's
name or are puzzled because they've never heard it before.

"People who know the word laugh, 'Oh my God! I can't believe you got the
rights to that!' If they've never heard it, they almost act offended that
you've discovered something they should know," he said.

For some in the Midlands, the word Cackalacky brings back memories of
home.

Charlie Gwinn, 49, of Columbia, recalls hearing Cackalacky used in casual
conversations while he was growing up in Laurens in the Upstate.

"I know I heard my dad use it, just kidding around or as a slang
expression," he said. "I think it was just one of those things growing up
in the Carolinas. It wasn't common. It wasn't something you'd hear every
day."

But younger Carolinians are hearing it nearly every day, whether in
hip-hop songs, in promos on local radio stations or while hanging out with
peers.

Stephanie McMillan, 18, of Sumter, said she hears it a lot on local radio
station the Big DM, 101.3 FM. And her friends say Cackalacky all the time,
mostly as a term of endearment or pride for their state.

For instance, if her cheerleading squad traveled out of state for
basketball, they might say, "We're from South Cackalacky," McMillan said.

Others from beyond the Cackalacky borders said they've heard the name used
for decades.

Skelton, 35, heard it as a child growing up in Missouri. "Obviously, the
term had made it that far west."

Jill Sahl, a library assistant at UNC's North Carolina Collection, heard
the term growing up in Northern Virginia in the late '60s and early 1970s.
Her family used it jokingly, saying things like, "Oh no! You've got to go
through North Cackalacky on your vacation!"

Eble said native Carolinians also use the word in a similar way.

"What people have told me is that it sort of emphasizes the rural quality.
It's self-deprecating, but in a way that shows their pride," she said.

For example, she said, one might say, "Pottery Barn? This is North
Cackalacky. We don't have Pottery Barn!"

SEEKING CACKALACKY

Eble started looking into the word this spring after librarians at UNC's
North Carolina Collection passed on a query about it.

She has lived in North Cackalacky for more than 30 years, but it was the
first time she had heard Cackalacky. So she began asking colleagues,
students and friends about the word. So far, she has not found an origin
or written citation.

Citations can come from such places as song lyrics, old letters, books or
maps. Lexicographers (the people who write dictionaries) use citations in
deciding whether a word makes their official lists.

Cackalacky, Eble said, has been elusive.

"You can say that right now dictionary makers are perplexed because they
don't have a normal record of this through the normal sources that make it
to the dictionary."

A version of the word has shown up in the Midlands on T-shirts, hats and
other items made by Columbia-based Cackalak Clothing Company. The owners
of the company declined to comment for this story.

Other S.C. calls yielded no leads: Librarians and archivists at the Penn
Center in St. Helena Island, Richland County Public Library's state
archive room and the Avery Center in Charleston said they hadn't seen the
term. Michael Montgomery, a retired USC professor of English and
linguistics, hadn't heard it. Nor had S.C. expert Walter Edgar, according
to the historian's staff at USC.

The Dictionary of American Regional English, a publication from Madison,
Wis., offered no clues, not even an entry for Cackalacky.

That project documents words, phrases and pronunciations that are part of
how we speak, rather than how we should speak.

Chief editor Joan H. Hall first heard Cackalacky this spring after Eble
asked about it. It's now on her radar, she said.

Folks in Cackalacky aren't alone, she said. Other regions have similar
nicknames for specific geographic areas.

"That's the kind of thing people like to play with because they are saying
something about the people who live there," Hall said.

So there might be no documented origin for the unofficial nickname for the
Carolinas. (The official nicknames, of course, are the Palmetto State for
South Carolina and Tar Heel State for North Carolina.)

TAKING GUESSES

That doesn't mean there aren't theories.

Skelton's best guess is that it could be a mutation of two words from the
states' early residents: Tsalaki (pronounced cha-lak-ee), the Cherokee way
to say Cherokee, and cocklaleekie, a traditional Scottish soup. That's
just a hunch; he hasn't found evidence to substantiate it.

Eble has been looking into the words for a few months. One theory she
heard was that it could have stemmed from the military presence in the
Carolinas, as a way for out-of-state servicemen to describe the region. As
in, "I'm being sent to Cackalacky."

Sahl of the North Carolina Collection said staff members there have
another theory that the term was spread through East Coast fishermen, who
would have to go to the waters of Cackalacky from time to time to chase
their catches.

"Most of us here feel it's something that came from out of state," she
said.

Once lexicographers tune in to a word like Cackalacky, they often can
uncover the origin.

"It's not impossible," Eble said. "The people who make dictionaries are
very sensitive to new words. They just have remarkable antennae."

==========================================================================
Paul Jones
"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." Alasdair Gray
http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/
pjones AT ibiblio.org voice: (919) 962-7600 fax: (919) 962-8071
===========================================================================





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