US dialect atlas
Lightning Bug or Firefly?
The most evenly split question in the survey: 19 states each. The line runs roughly along the Appalachians, with lightning bug to the south and west and firefly along the northeast and the coasts.
- lightning bug leads 19 states
- firefly leads 19 states
- no listed answer leads 13 states
Take the quiz and see which accent yours matches →
State by state
Share of respondents in each state giving each answer. Percentages do not sum to 100: the survey offered answers this map does not name, and they are left out rather than folded into one of the three.
| State | lightning bug | firefly |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 62.3% ◀ | 2.6% |
| Alaska | 6.5% | 54.4% ◀ |
| Arizona | 16% | 45.3% ◀ |
| Arkansas | 52.6% ◀ | 4.5% |
| California | 8.6% | 63.4% ◀ |
| Colorado | 11.4% | 49.7% ◀ |
| Connecticut | 23% | 30.9% |
| Delaware | 47.7% ◀ | 4.6% |
| Florida | 27.8% | 28.4% |
| Georgia | 49.7% ◀ | 7.6% |
| Hawaii | 5.3% | 66.7% ◀ |
| Idaho | 5.4% | 66.7% ◀ |
| Illinois | 50.6% ◀ | 8.3% |
| Indiana | 64.8% ◀ | 3% |
| Iowa | 51.9% ◀ | 4.8% |
| Kansas | 51.1% ◀ | 5.4% |
| Kentucky | 70.4% ◀ | 1.7% |
| Louisiana | 41.1% ◀ | 19.1% |
| Maine | 16.7% | 41.2% ◀ |
| Maryland | 40.6% | 14.1% |
| Massachusetts | 9.5% | 56% ◀ |
| Michigan | 18.5% | 31.5% |
| Minnesota | 10.1% | 49% ◀ |
| Mississippi | 56.5% ◀ | 7.8% |
| Missouri | 59.5% ◀ | 4.4% |
| Montana | 12.6% | 56.1% ◀ |
| Nebraska | 42.9% | 10.3% |
| Nevada | 9.4% | 65.6% ◀ |
| New Hampshire | 13.3% | 46.9% ◀ |
| New Jersey | 44% ◀ | 12.4% |
| New Mexico | 10.6% | 58.4% ◀ |
| New York | 24.4% | 30.5% |
| North Carolina | 51% ◀ | 6.1% |
| North Dakota | 10.5% | 57% ◀ |
| Ohio | 63.2% ◀ | 3.7% |
| Oklahoma | 36.5% | 9.9% |
| Oregon | 8.3% | 62.5% ◀ |
| Pennsylvania | 59.5% ◀ | 5.3% |
| Rhode Island | 21.7% | 52.6% ◀ |
| South Carolina | 50% ◀ | 9.4% |
| South Dakota | 15.9% | 40.6% |
| Tennessee | 63.4% ◀ | 2.8% |
| Texas | 32.2% | 21% |
| Utah | 5.6% | 63% ◀ |
| Vermont | 18.4% | 25% |
| Virginia | 44.3% | 10.4% |
| Washington | 8.3% | 64.7% ◀ |
| Washington, D.C. | 34.2% | 13.4% |
| West Virginia | 58.8% ◀ | 2.5% |
| Wisconsin | 19.6% | 35.7% |
| Wyoming | 14.7% | 52.9% ◀ |
Where this data comes from
The map above is drawn from the Harvard Dialect Survey, collected by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder in 2002–2003. It asked 122 questions and recorded, for each one, the share of respondents in every US state who gave each answer. It is a large self-selected sample rather than a census, and it is now two decades old — treat it as a well-supported picture of how people spoke then, not a measurement of today.
Data used under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence: attribution and share-alike, non-commercial. DialectGuessr’s own survey data is separate and is described on the about page.