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Comment by nematode | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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.

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.

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