NOLA vs. New Orleans: Why it hits a nerve with residents
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N'awlins. New Orleenz. These names for New Orleans are like nails on a chalkboard to locals. But what about NOLA?
Why it matters: The acronym has become a lightning rod for questions of authenticity, identity and who gets to define New Orleans.
- Post-Hurricane Katrina, natives increasingly associate its use in conversation as something distinctly non-local and, by extension, a sign of gentrification.
Case in point: The conversation about NOLA vs. New Orleans has been bubbling on social media for years. Last week, the tension boiled over at a City Council meeting.
- A self-identified transplant spoke before the council about his love for NOLA — yes, he said the acronym aloud as "No-lah."
- Audience members loudly corrected him by saying "New Orleans," according to Axios' Chelsea Brasted, who was at the meeting.
State of play: The acronym NOLA was around before Katrina, but Virginia Tech professor Katie Carmichael and other researchers tell Axios it has surged in popularity in the past 20 years.
- "Now you see it everywhere," Carmichael says, especially on shirts and in business names.
- It's also a common pet name.
Flashback: Some of the more notable uses of NOLA before Katrina include...
- NOLA Records, a now-defunct label founded in 1964.
- Emeril's restaurant NOLA, which opened in 1992.
- NOLA.com, the website for The Times-Picayune, which was registered in 1998.
The friction point: The tension with the term now seems to focus on who gets to define a place, says Carmichael and Nathalie Dajko, a Tulane anthropologist who specializes in linguistics.
- "The question of what it means to be a 'true' New Orleanian has become more fraught since Hurricane Katrina," Carmichael says.
- The newcomers want to adopt the local culture, Dajko says, "but there's such a thing as going too far."
- Carmichael adds, "The trouble arises when the line between appreciation and appropriation becomes blurred."
Zoom in: Getting the name wrong is insulting to the people who are here already, says Dajko, who has written about the power of being able to name a place.
- "You get these reactions because it is personal," Dajko says. "Being from somewhere matters."
What they're saying: Shawanda Marie of New Orleans Creole Story Pot says she's been pushing back against the use of "NOLA" for about 10 years.
- "The acronym NOLA represents gentrified New Orleans...period," she wrote on Facebook recently.
- New Orleans author Maurice Carlos Ruffin says he doesn't have a problem with the term, but he does see it as a sign of gentrification, with people who use it trying to change things like second-line culture and music on the street.
- The city is a welcoming place, he says, but "pay respect to the culture."
- New Orleans & Co. doesn't use "NOLA" in its international marketing of the city because it doesn't resonate with that audience, says senior VP Kelly Schulz. The term is used in some of their editorial pieces on neworleans.com, though.
- Robin White, a Nicholls State professor and a New Orleans resident, says she most commonly sees outsiders using the term. The upside, she jokes — it prevents them from mispronouncing New Orleans.
- Newtral Groundz also talked about "the very aggressive switch from New Orleans to NOLA" in a recent post about second-line culture.
The bottom line: "In a way, it's not really about a label, it's about what folks are noticing about who uses that label (perception is transplants), when it came about (perception is post-Katrina), and what it seems to imply (perception is an unearned sense of ownership over New Orleans identity)," Carmichael says.
What's next: Tulane graduate students will study the NOLA vs. New Orleans divide this semester. Stay tuned for what they uncover.
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