If you’ve been following the latest trend on TikTok, then you likely saw a LOT of southern girls during the recruitment process at the University of Alabama. And while the lion's share of these young ladies are from the South, it begs the question: How do you know if someone is from the South? It's more than simple geography, ranging from Texas across the coast to the Carolinas. Southern is a way of life.
Any good Southerner will have multiple answers ranging from southern sayings to food to dress to ideals. There’s plenty of good and bad to come out of the South—but isn’t that true anywhere? It's so much more than just watching Southern Charm on Bravo, driving a pickup truck, or paying for a subscription to Southern Living magazine. Being Southern is a lifestyle, a birthright, a legacy, a perspective. It’s a whole VIBE that is heads and shoulders above everything else.
Southerners are thankful and blessed to be Southern—so here are 5 signs you’re from the South!
Drinking Sweet Tea on the Daily
Order tea in a Southern state, and it will be sweet tea. Not sweetened, not sugared—SWEET. And it will be served ice cold with a LOT of ice and likely a wedge of lemon—even if you didn't request it. Because the only thing you can count on in the South more than a church and bank on every corner is that we like our tea sweet with sugar.
You’ll have to request tea “unsweetened” or even “hot” if you’re looking for the drink that happens over the pond in England. So, if you’re part of the uninitiated, steel yourself for that first sip—it goes down cool, sweet, and right.
Sundays Belong to the Lord
Sundays belong to the Lord and your momma’s good dinner—which is not to be confused with supper, which happens in the evening in case there’s a question about terminology. There’s a reason there’s a church on every corner in small towns across the South, and that’s because somebody and their relatives (commonly called “kin”) belong to them.
While Sunday mornings are reserved for houses of worship, Sunday dinner (I believe other folks traditionally call this lunch) is the meal of the week at your mom or grandmother’s house. It happens directly after church around the noon hour. You can even eat lunch the rest of the week, but on Sundays, it's called dinner.
Football is a Way of Life
And then God created football. There’s no sport in the South that’s more revered than American football—the kind with a pigskin ball and 11 men on each side of it. And in the South, we start the kids early in football; most little boys have held one before they’ve even thought about their milk teeth yet.
In the South, families are split along longstanding football traditions and schools, where the only thing that can be agreed upon is that the SEC is the conference that all other colleges wish they were in. Football consumes weekends in the South—from the Thursday night middle school games through Friday Night Lights of the local high school, through Saturday collegiate games, and finally into Sunday, when the NFL takes over.
You Mind Your Manners
If you’ve been around someone Southern, they likely called you "ma’am" or "sir"—regardless of age or whether or not they know you. And that can be a little weird at first—until you understand that it's from a principled point of respect; they aren’t just courtesy words in the South. The same with "please" and "thank you," as well as a good “God bless you” on a hardy sneeze.
These manners are driven into Southern youth at a young age, and while many think it's something of the past, just watch someone Southern try to get by you in a grocery store; I guarantee you’ll get an “excuse me, sir.”
Y'all Say "Y'all"
It’s the word that transcends all others in the Southern vernacular: Y’all. And depending on how you say it, it means so much. For the uninitiated and the grammar police, it’s a contraction of "you" and "all." "Y’all" can be a group of people, it can be singular. It can be an exclamation or an adjective.
And once you’ve introduced the word into your lexicon, it's rather difficult to get away from, much like your favorite swear word. "Y’all" can be a swear, it can be endearing, and it’s inclusive. Unlike most contractions, you can’t split it in the middle. There’s only one way to spell it: Y-'-A-L-L.
