I’ve lived all but a small portion of my life in Hamilton.
I’ve attended Hamilton schools, made Hamilton friends and played Hamilton sports (read: baseball). I live here. I work here. I watch Game of Thrones here. This is home.
But, despite Hamilton’s importance in my life, I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider here.
Two things, in my mind, are to blame: being a first-generation resident of this area, and not being part of the 60 percent of Hamilton residents who are related to each other. (Seriously, how many “cousins” can a person have in one town?) So, between my North Jersey ancestry and my lack of Chambersburg ancestry, I have had to work harder to fit in.
Sometimes, it’s easy. Pork roll, for example, is easy to embrace. So is Trenton tomato pie. Philadelphia sports fans have their certain charms. And the local accent is interesting, particularly when “Could one of you turn the water on?” becomes “Could yous turn the warder awn?”
It’s just the price one pays to live in Central-South-Close-To-Philly Jersey, and it’s really not much of a price.
But there’s one concession I will never make. I will never, ever call any sandwich or food-type item a “hoagie.”
I thought I was a pariah for this stance. You see, there is some debate about the origin of the word “hoagie,” but no one’s debating the term sprang from the Philadelphia area. Considering this area’s connection and proximity to Philadelphia, there seemed to be no way there would be more than a handful of sub supporters.
As it turns out, more people in the Trenton area agree with me than the “hoagie” hoard. And I have data to back it up.
My source was a set of 105 maps based on regional dialect data created by North Carolina State University doctoral student Joshua Katz. (At press time, you could still access the maps from Katz’ website, www4.ncsu.edu/~jakatz2.) The maps show how survey respondents across the United States answered questions like “What do you call rubber-soled shoes worn for athletic activities?” By reading, I learned only people in the Northeast and South Florida wear sneakers. The daft majority of our nation apparently uses the term “tennis shoes.”
Amid questions about word pronunciation and drive-through liquor stores, Katz’s maps tackle a number of important contemporary national disputes. Sometimes, the maps provide no clear winner, like one analyzing the heated soda-versus-pop debate. (“Soda” won big in California and the Northeast, “pop” in the Midwest and “coke” in the South.) They simply affirmed what we already knew.
But one of the images captured my attention. The map answered a question every Hamilton resident has had to consider with seriousness: “What do you call the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, lettuce and so on?” I wonder if Katz knew areas of the country exist where people have ended friendships—and worse—because of this very query.
The nation, as a whole, overwhelmingly preferred “sub.” No surprise.
But there was an option to get a local breakdown of results, and the Trenton-area numbers shocked me. “Sub” also narrowly won in the Trenton survey, with 47.2 percent of the vote. “Hoagie” finished second with 46.2 percent, “hero” received 2 percent, and 4.6 percent call it something other than those three.
So, it’s not an overwhelming victory for “sub,” but it’s progress.
I wish I had this data a few months ago when a friend and I got into a heated debate about the sub-versus-hoagie issue.
I tried to sell her on sub’s merits. Sub was simple and straightforward. The sandwich looks like a submarine, therefore it’s a submarine sandwich, or sub. What in the world is a “hoagie”?
My computer didn’t know; its spell-checker urging me to change “hoagie” to “Hague.” The Hague is a city in the Netherlands that hosts the United Nations, foreign embassies, the Dutch government and the International Criminal Court. It’s my stance that anything more obscure than the place hosting the International Criminal Court is weird and unnecessary.
When I made this point to my friend, she became offended.
“It’s not weird,” she said. “It’s special. It’s a hoagie.”
“People in Boston call milkshakes ‘frappes.’” I said. “Isn’t that weird?”
“You’re a frappe,” my friend said.
I walked away smiling. If I was a frappe, at least I was a frappe with a point.
Now, I have a point and some colorful charts. And the data provided me with more than just numerical proof of the superiority of “sub.” It also gave the battling factions some common ground.
Because the sub-hoagie debate will never be settled. But I think we can all agree those “hero” folks are off-kilter.
Connect with Post senior community editor Rob Anthes at facebook.com/robanthes.
