Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Growing up in New York, we called it "soder." Moving to Boston (OK, Somerville) in 1988 to be with my girlfriend, I had to get used to "tonic" or "pop."

In 1990, I moved with my sweetie Andi from Somerville to Seattle. Here, it seems to be "pop," "soda" or "soda pop."

I'll have the house fizzy water, as I usually say.

I'm from New Jersey and I say "Soda-Pop." No one else around here does. It makes me feel special.

@Alm25 & @misseditor........my father called "it" sody-pop when he was a little boy in the Poconos. He might have continued, but we teased him unmercifully.

You can get a huge pop out of plastic bottles of soda when you forget to bring them in from the garage and they freeze. You just don't realize how sticky that stuff really is until you have to wash it off of everything within 200 square feet, from floor to ceiling.

@ Alm 25. "but my grandfather says sodie-pop"

My grandpa says the same thing out in the country in Northern Calif. We say soda here of course, but when I went to school in Oregon, they all say pop. I actually argued with one of my new Oregon friends about whether to say soda or pop. My husband, who's from Oregon, quickly adapted to our soda ways.

I think it depends on where in Massachusetts you are--you might not hear it called tonic in restaurants or stores, but go to a baseball game or a swimming pool in the summer and you'll probably hear it, it is pretty old-fashioned though!