Dixie

[1] The term became popularized throughout the United States by songs that nostalgically referred to the American South.

[4] In this sense, it would remain so into the 1970s, until an influx of people from the Northeast made the state and its culture significantly less Southern (especially Baltimore and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.).

"The Washington area's 'Southernness' has fallen into steep decline, part of a trend away from strongly held regional identities.

In the 150th anniversary year of the start of the Civil War, the region at the heart of the conflict has little left of its historic bond with Dixie.

[8][verification needed] Today, Dixie is most often associated with parts of the Southern United States where traditions and legacies of the Confederate era and the Antebellum South live most strongly.

[2] The concept of Dixie as the location of a certain set of cultural assumptions, mindsets, and traditions was explored in the book The Nine Nations of North America (1981).

A 1976 study revealed that in an area of the South covering about 350,000 square miles (all of Mississippi and Alabama; almost all of Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina; and around half of Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida) the term reached 25% of the popularity of the term American in names of commercial business entities.

[19] In 1976, at about 600,000 square miles (1,600,000 km2)[a] Sociologists Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts surveyed all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the use of the words "Dixie" and "Southern" in business names.