It seems like Westerner, Midwesterner and Southerner are pretty obvious and common regional identifiers in the U.S. But is there an equivalent for the Northeast? I’ve never heard anyone call themselves Northeasterner, so what do you call someone from that area (DC, Delaware, Maryland, New England, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, The Virginias)

44 comments

  6. Northerner would be okay. New Englander only applies to those in New England… I’m from PA and would be really confused to be called a New Englander lol

  7. Yankee or New Englander or Northerner. New Englander only applies to CT, RI, NH, VT, ME, MA(and barely CT which half of it might be NYC suburbs anyway).

  8. I’d call em an East Coaster. New Englander if they were specifically from New England.

  10. There is no Northern identity like there is a Southern identity in the South. You might say your from the North East but that’s it.

    People will choose to identify with a specific city or state.

    I have never heard someone call themselves a Northerner/Yankee like the comments say.

  11. Well, New England is full of New Englanders/Yankees. They can often get really mad at people one state and sub-100 miles away though, so it’s not like they’re terribly unified aesthetics aside.

    Anyone from western Connecticut downward is more mid-Atlantic than northeastern. Outside of greater NYC they have even less commonality between them.

  12. From NY lived in Alabama for a bit. Got called yankee a lot. Or transplant.

  13. I say “I’m from the Northeast”. And then people know I’m sarcastic af and know what really good pizza is, and also I don’t have time for a 5-10 min “polite” conversation…”how’s it going?” And that’s all folks

  14. New England and the mid-atlantic are kinda in their own categories. New Englander definitely is a thing if you’re in NH, VT, ME, eastern CT, RI, or MA. As for the mid-atlantic states, there’s a tendency to associate yourself with whatever big city you’re near (“New Yorker” for Greater NYC metro, etc.). And honestly, upstate NY and the central and western parts of Pennsylvania tend to be more associated with the rust belt/midwest

  15. Excuse me? The Virginias? Don’t associate us with those people. We are West Virginians and please God don’t call us northeasterners

  16. The general stereotype is: Boston/New York accent, rude, loud, Italian, and no patience.

    Each state in the Northeast has its own identity. Shit, a shocking number of people in the US don’t know that Rhode Island even is a state.

  17. New Englander is definitely an identity- but that’s just ME, VT, NH, MA, RI, and some of CT.

    Mid-Atlantic is a geographic description for the non-New England states mentioned aside from VA, but I wouldn’t really call it an identity. In practice, people from NYC/Boston/Philly/DC tend to have lots of social and business connections which might be considered something like [BosWash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BosWash) or the Acela Corridor, but I’d never describe myself that way.

  20. In New England we call ourselves New Englanders. NY is in the Northeast but not in New England, they just call themselves New Yorkers.

  22. You’re listing a mixture of New England states and mid-Atlantic states. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and (depending who you ask) parts of New York can all be considered Mid-Atlantic. If you wanted to simply sum up what you can call either group, just say “northerner” or “that goddamn yankee” 😉

  24. As someone from jersey most of our identity is centered around not being from New York or Pennsylvania

  25. Don’t you dare include West Virginia in with those tidewater folks from Richmond.

  27. Yankee originally meant and sometimes still means this, even if it sometimes get broadened to “Northerner” when talking about the Civil War.

  28. New Englander for anyone northeast of New York. New Yorker. New Jersey Native is what my mom used to say. Our family has been there for 397 years. Probably don’t fo that now because our DNA tests still show 100% European. People from Pennsylvania like it when you call them Pennies. Pronounce it like Peen-eyes.

  29. Northerners. Though as others have said, DC, MD and VA are not included in that. They’re either the DMV or I think VA is often still considered the South.

  30. Outside of the Northeast: Yankee.

    But internally we just call ourselves: not the morons.

  31. Broadly speaking, East Coasters. This term may or may not include the coastal states of the South, depending on context.

    Regionally, you could divide it into The Mid Atlantic and New England with Connecticut as the border.

  34. I think we don’t put those states into geographic groups together. You either come from the Mid-Atlantic states or you’re a New Englander.

  35. I think there really isn’t a common identity between those regions. We group ourselves as Midwesterners because we share common traits. We come from similar immigrant groups and share a common accent. That’s not the case on the east coast. Someone from New Jersey, and someone from West Virginia don’t have similar traits/accents/customs in common.

  36. I’m from PA and consider myself an East Coaster (even though we don’t border the Atlantic lol).

  37. Depends on the speaker and the specific subset of northeast states. Northerner, Yankee, northeasterner, New Englander. But it’s underappreciated how different people can be within the northeast despite being just a quarter the size of Texas. Someone working in a financial services firm in central Connecticut has practically zero in common with someone working the forests of central Maine; the former may even find it hard to understand the speech of the latter.

  38. NY is NY

    ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT are New England

    NJ is NJ

    PA, DE, MD are Mid-Atlantic

    Virginia is southern. Might be mid-Atlantic. Or something else. They are *not* northeast.

  42. Just seconding what others have said, except for New England, there isn’t a name. I think it’s probably because we refuse to be paired up with anyone else, and no one wants to be associated with us, haha.

  43. There is no united Northern identity. You’ll never see a Philadelphian, a New Yorker, and a Bostonian pound fists and welcome each other as brothers. They’d more likely just swear at each other in unintelligible accents.

    I mean hell my *state* can’t even get a unified identity together.

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