#70206 - White Elephant names

[Katya]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/70206/

DARE didn't have anything useful about regional names for gift exchanges, so I decided to do a little dialect research on Twitter. I did searches for each of the listed names, and then looked up the account of the person using the name to see if they listed their location, and mapped out the locations that corresponded to each term.

Assorted notes: If a name isn't listed below, it means I didn't find enough Twitter data to make a meaningful conclusion (with the exception of "Christmas Swap," which appears to be used in the UK and Canada). States that appear in multiple boxes had both terms show up equally or significantly. This map is very general and simplified (especially with regard to "White Elephant Gift"), so don't freak out if you grew up in western Pennsylvania and said "Yankee Swap" when my map shows that to be "Pollyanna" territory. The data collected from Twitter was not controlled for population. Also, "White Elephant Gift" appears to have a slightly different meaning from many of the others. In particular, a White Elephant Gift is generally a bad gift, while some of the other terms may refer to gifts that are bad or good, so it's possible that White Elephant + another term are both in use by the same population, but used to refer to different things.

Purple = Yankee Swap
Blue = Polyanna
Red = Dirty Santa
Green = Chinese Gift Exchange (Also used in Alberta, which doesn't appear on this map.)
Yellow = White Elephant

[wired]

#patronsaintof100HB

[yayfulness]

I'd just like to point out that my map, completely devoid of any research, still got Yankee Swap essentially right and was only a small distance off on Pollyanna and Dirty Santa.

[Katya]

I'd just like to point out that my map, completely devoid of any research, still got Yankee Swap essentially right . . .

You did! (Although the word "Yankee" helps. )

. . . and was only a small distance off on Pollyanna and Dirty Santa.

Some day, I would love to see an actual smiley-faced isogloss.