We call it a hoagie!
This map clearly shows that the only place a hoagie is called a hoagie is the Philadelphia region. Everyone else knows a hoagie as a sub. This never even dawned on me that I am from the only place that uses the term hoagie. I remember college in Pittsburgh thinking it was weird that a hoagie was a sub or hero and obviously these Yinzers were way off the mark in their categorizing. We all know rubber bands aren’t gum-bands, and it’s slippery not slippy. After seeing this map, I have a bit more perspective that I was the odd man out. I think this is a great thing though because it stamps the fact that Philly has it’s own uniqueness in the sandwiches we create. There’s a reason it’s a PHILLY cheese steak and why we are the only people who know what a hoagie is. Things are created and perfected in Philly, something to be proud of. Why other places can’t nail down a cheese steak is almost comical because it’s such a simple sandwich. There is something special about a hoagie from Wawa.
The other map I enjoy is the soda / pop / coke map. Let’s be completely biased here and see exactly who calls it soda. The Northeast, Southwest, Milwaukee / St. Louis, and Florida. The full name is called Soda Pop. The noun is the first word. Smart people call things nouns. Pop is a descriptive feature of soda. The carbonation is the pop, not the drink. Pop is the sound a balloon makes when it breaks, not a drink. You’d also never call something by a brand name as it’s preferred choice. I no doubt have ordered a soda as “coke” before but that’s because I wanted coke. If I order a coke in the South is it possible to get a ginger ale?
Here are 22 other maps of areas that pronounce and use words various ways. I noticed that I said the words in the way my region did almost every time. It’s funny how easy it is to take the position that however you grew up and how words are pronounced and described around you is the right way. These should offer a larger perspective that just because you think one way, doesn’t mean a different person thinks another way and you both can be right. Being open minded is critical.
The antipasto salad version makes sense (veggies and cured Italian meats). This would lead us to believe that PHL could only take credit for the “Italian Hoagie” – where a “sub” could be anything served on a similar roll. However, the origin stories of “submarine” sandwiches from various shipyards along the east coast bear logic as well. The real question is “What was served first on this type of bread?” If it was Antipasto – then PHL wins. I think only then can we understand its origins.
via Wikipedia:
(The term hoagie originated in the Philadelphia area. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reported, in 1953, that Italians working at the World War I–era shipyard in Philadelphia, known as Hog Island where emergency shipping was produced for the war effort, introduced the sandwich, by putting various meats, cheeses, and lettuce between two slices of bread. This became known as the “Hog Island” sandwich; shortened to Hoggies, then the “hoagie”.
The Philadelphia Almanac and Citizen’s Manual offers a different explanation, that the sandwich was created by early-twentieth-century street vendors called “hokey-pokey men”, who sold antipasto salad, meats and cookies. When Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta H.M.S. Pinafore opened in Philadelphia in 1879, bakeries produced a long loaf called the pinafore. Entrepreneurial “hokey-pokey men” sliced the loaf in half, stuffed it with antipasto salad, and sold the world’s first “hoagie”.[10]
Another explanation is that the word “hoagie” arose in the late 19th to early 20th century, among the Italian community in South Philadelphia, when “on the hoke” was a slang used to describe a destitute person. Deli owners would give away scraps of cheeses and meats in an Italian bread-roll known as a “hokie”, but the Italian immigrants pronounced it “hoagie”.[11]
Other less likely explanations involve “Hogan” (a nickname for Irish workers at the Hog Island shipyard), a reference to the pork or “hog” meat used in hoagies, “honky sandwich” (using a racial slur for white people seen eating them) or “hooky sandwich” (derived from “hookie” for truant kids seen eating them).[5] Shortly after World War II, there were numerous varieties of the term in use throughout Philadelphia. By the 1940s, the spellings “hoagie” and, to a lesser extent, “hoagy” had come to dominate lesser user variations like “hoogie” and “hoggie”.[12] By 1955, restaurants throughout the area were using the term “hoagie”, with many selling hoagies and subs or hoagies and pizza. Listings in Pittsburgh show hoagies arriving in 1961 and becoming widespread in that city by 1966.[12])