Why are left-handers called “southpaws”? (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Why are left-handers called “southpaws”? (2015)

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The article on wordorigins.org contains more information, including this quote:

Use of southpaw to mean the left hand goes back all the way to 1813, long before baseball, as we know it today, existed. It’s used in a letter appearing in the Philadelphia newspaper The Tickler on 30 June of that year:

“Luk here mon, and convince yourself,” said he, holding up the Tickler, in the right paw, between the ceiling and the floor, and with the south paw pointing to the “bow, vow, vow.”

(Source - http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/southpaw/)

The article just kicks the can down the road: why is the left hand called the 'south paw' in boxing?

If I had to guess -- in a normal defensive stance, where both hands are held out in front, the right hand is typically higher and slightly in front of the left hand. Top being north, bottom is south.

For a lefty, you're correct. But for a righty, then the right hand would be south. So, that can't possibly be the reason why boxers call lefties 'Southpaws'

The parent comment makes perfect sense to me: a left-handed person would have their left hand south. So their main hand is the south paw.

Your parent comment points out that for a right-handed person, their right hand would be south. The same is true for either handedness, thus does little to differentiate the two.

Left handed fighters put their right hand south. Their left hand (jab hand) closely guards their cheek/chin. So it can't possibly be south.

There's really no good "reason" here, and people keep making up superfluous descriptions, like the whole deal about ordinal baseball diamond orientations. Or, in boxing, how the southpaw stance has the left hand below ("south") the right.

The real answer appears to be that "south" merely means "opposite" and "paw" means—of course—"hand".[1]

[1] http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/southpaw

Prevalence of left handedness increases towards the equator: science fact.

Which is also why left handedness is so often literally translated to 'north-hand' in various Australian, South American and South African languages.

On the subject of direction word trivia, the Sanskrit word for right, a cognate of Latin "dexter", is "dakshina." In this case, however, it eventually came to mean "south".

Why? It makes sense when you realize that the the word for ahead/in-front "purva" came to mean east, the word for back/behind "paschima" came to mean west, and the common word for north "uttara" can mean left. So the words imply an eastward-facing world orientation, which itself probably has its origin in worship of the rising sun.

Also:

     purva -> "first"

     uttara -> "second"

A anti-clockwise orientation..

Possibly related: why does "going south" mean degrading, spoiling, breaking down ...

The "paws" in "southpaws" clarifies that it is a derogatory term, suggesting that the left-handed are clumsy.

Could it be that the sense of south in "going south" is a back formation from southpaw?

Etymonline documents "going south" as meaning "vanish, abscond", tracing it to 1920's America: "American English, probably from mid-19c. notion of disappearing south to Mexico or Texas to escape pursuit or responsibility, reinforced by Native American belief (attested in colonial writing mid-18c.) that the soul journeys south after death." It could be that the "turn bad" meaning derives from that.

Where are you getting it's derogatory? It wasn't stated or implied in the article.

The phrase "Well, that went south really quickly" tends to mean a situation got really bad. Implying that south is bad.

Perhaps related: the Latin words for left and right are sinister and dexter, which obviously have connotations...

Seems etymologically plausible at the least. Left-handedness used to be frowned upon up to the point of children being forced to write with their right hands in school (often under physical threat of a ruler or reed slapped across your left hand if you did dare to use it). Glad that was over when I grew up in the eighties.

Even today some people react with surprise when they see me writing with my left hand. We're a sizeable minority (of ten percent) — it's far from rare — but amongst older generations it sometimes just comes across as weird (I'm in my thirties myself).

Is that true? I always assumed it's because on a map and in general, south is associated with down. So "going south" is basically like "going downhill", etc.

What about going pear-shaped?

It's 'cause Pete Tong has a big arse. /s

That's an interesting take... I haven't looked into the history of middle infielders, but left handed middle infielders would require a half a second pivot to throw to first base, especially when going for double plays. Thus, maybe there is a basis for left handers. Seeing how the active roster was capped somewhere between 11-13 during the 1880s, it could very well be the case that having a left handed thrower were anathema to the team when you need 9 players to field.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/baseball_rosters.sh...

Remember that sinister is the Latin word for left-handed..

Historically, the left side, and subsequently left-handedness, was considered negative in many cultures. The Latin word sinistra originally meant "left" but took on meanings of "evil" or "unlucky" by the Classical Latin era, and this double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word "sinister".

Meanings gradually developed from use of these terms in the ancient languages. In many modern European languages, including English, the word for the direction "right" also means "correct" or "proper", and also stands for authority and justice. In most Slavic languages the root prav is used in words carrying meanings of correctness or justice.

Wikipedia also has a fun article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_peopl...

Because most people are right handed, there is a notion of it being 'natural' to use their right hand. This is probably where we get the overlap with words that mean 'correct'. Doing something left-handed, for most people, is doing it backwards.

People are rarely left-handed, so there is an 'us verses them' notion behind the term. Right handed people are the default and left-handed people are different. Note phrases like "right hand man" describing someone you rely on.

Finally, a large percentage of leaders seem to be left handed (for reasons I cannot fathom), so perhaps sinister meaning evil has some root in people's criticism of those with power?

Theory goes, left-handers have an advantage in battle (everyone has fought and trained against a right hander). Those that won, and had good political skills got to rule (and remain ruling) and reproduce, so it was self selecting for leadership. What is odd about that theory is our almost static percentage of the population thru the ages.

> What is odd about that theory is our almost static percentage of the population thru the ages.

> odd

That simply means the theory is wrong, not "odd".

Your analysis is incorrect.

'southpaw' is a boxing term that refers to left-handed boxers. It is in no way derogatory and did not originate with baseball [1]. In fact, it is more of a compliment because southpaws have a strategic and tactical advantage over right-handers due to stance.

'paw' as in hand

'south' as in 'not usual'

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southpaw_stance

  The earliest baseball mention of a “southpaw” - as 
  found by Tom Shieber, senior curator at the National 
  Baseball Hall of Fame—appeared in the New York Atlas 
  in 1858, but in reference to a left-handed first 
  baseman, not a pitcher.

The first documented use of a phrase or term in print, does not mean that the writer used it according to the original intended context, especially since it does not specifically get used in a passage that explicitly states the intended use and origin.

The atlas doesn't explicitly state: "We decided to call him a southpaw, because we're inventing this new term, and not because of convention, and it means 1, 2 and 3, because x, y and z."

Etymological research is rarely cut-and-dry. The authors are aware of this, and the quotation is being held as a counterexample to "the conventional wisdom that the word “southpaw” originated “from the practice in baseball of arranging the diamond with the batter facing east to avoid the afternoon sun. A left-handed pitcher facing west would therefore have his pitching arm toward the south of the diamond.”"

The article goes on to point out that southpaw was almost definitely a boxing term before it was given its baseball "etymology".

Rocky movie has an explanation about Southpaw, may be it is here say or not, but it does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4lxjvrhHs

This post must be related to the recent "How do you draw a circle?" [1] article. They used the term "southpaw", which I had never heard before.

EDIT: Strange, I definitely read the word "southpaw" somewhere in the last few days, and I remember learning that it was a term for left-handed people. Now I can't find it anywhere in the circle article, the HN comments [2], or the Reddit thread [3].

Little things like this really make me want to sign up for fetching.io again.

EDIT 2: Ahh, I found it! It was in a Quartz Daily Brief [4] news summary that I had skimmed earlier today:

> Left-handed people are more likely to be geniuses. The trait indicates greater connectivity between brain hemispheres, which may explain why southpaws seem to have an edge at math. ([5])

js2, I'd be really interested to know if that's why you posted this, or if it was just a coincidence.

[1] https://qz.com/994486/the-way-you-draw-circles-says-a-lot-ab...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579728

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6i5pa0/how...

[4] https://qz.com/daily-brief/

[5] https://qz.com/1006075/left-handed-people-are-more-likely-to...

None of the above. :-)

My daughter was doing geometry homework that had a question about the direction of a baseball field and claimed they are often oriented so that the batter faces east.

I wanted to verify the assertion, and Google led me to this article. I was familiar with "southpaw" but always thought it was a boxing term and didn't know its etymology.

Haha, that's great. Just the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon for me, then.

I have never heard that term before

Do you watch baseball? Because I would be surprised if you hadn't heard it there.

Different parts of the UK had different names for left-handed people. It predates baseball or rounders. I can't remember which, but one region used the term 'southpaw'.

I've seen a map explaining this but I can't find it at the moment. Its a weird feeling when I completely can't find something via Google, even though I've seen it online.

Well, southpaw doesn't have a pejorative connotation, so I guess it beats being called "sinister".

sinistra, in Latin proper, simply meant left. It was later that someone decided that left = evil and sinister, well became sinister, but the historical root simply means left and is the original archaic definition of sinister.

Personally I am more concerned by our higher than average death rate than I am worried about being touched by the devil.

Don't let yourself be touched by the devil and maybe you'll live longer! /s

A quick Google research will return a few articles explaining how the studies that started this myth about higher death rate in the 80s and 90s were flawed.

Good to know, it's been some time since I read about left handed deaths and only recall the articles being all the buzz back then.

I had never heard of this higher death rate thing, and being a lefty myself I was curious after your comment :)

Seems just as likely that southpaw is a malapropism for sinister at some point; in our family at least mis-hearings are often a long way off the intended word.

I'm glad this expression won out, instead of the briefly popular but terribly clumsy "antipodean-gripper." /bs

And for footedness, a lefty is "goofy foot" in board sports.

Except that "regular" is left foot leading and "goofy" is right foot leading.

In my experience learning to ride "switch" is only a matter of practice, and not much at that.

Anyone who juggles, or plays keepy-up (aka foot juggling) knows the importance of practicing evenly on both sides

My dad had always told the story regarding the orientation of the stadium. Interesting to learn that it may not be the case.

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