ABSTRACT
The Renaming of a
Tennessee Region
John Morgan
Professor
Leonard W. Brinkman
Professor
The northeastern section of Tennessee has been known as Upper East Tennessee since the 1840s. During the last
few years, however, a new regional label, Northeast Tennessee, has been promoted as a more appropriate regional
name. The push for a shift from the use
of Upper East Tennessee to Northeast
Tennessee has been spearheaded by
agencies whose missions are to increase tourism and to attract new industry in the region. The local medianewspapers, radio, and television-have
played key roles in the renaming process. Although there is some opposition
to the new name, a campaign to designate the region as Northeast Tennessee
will likely be successful in about a decade. However, that success might be
offset by the loss of an important component of the region 's heritage-a name
that has served the region for 150 years.
KEY WORDS : perception, place names,
Tennessee, vernacular regions.
INTRODUCTION
Department of Geography
Emory and Henry College
Emory, VA 24327
Department of Geography
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996
A vernacular region is one that is
"perceived to exist by its inhabitants"
(Jordan and Rowntree, 1990). A growing
body of literature on vernacular regions
has identified such regions in the United
States, including those located within in dividual states (e.g., Brownell, 1960;
Dunbar, 1961; Friberg and Zeigler, 1988;
Good, 1981; Hale, 1984; Lamme and 01 dakowski, 1982; Reed, 1976; Shortridge,
1980; Zelinsky, 1980). Other works, most
notably those by Shortridge (1984, 1985,
1987) on the Middle West, have examined the changing character of broad
vernacular regions. Little research, however, has been devoted to understanding the processes of change within a
small vernacular region, although the
works by Jordan (1978) on Texas regions, Raitz and Ulack (1981) on Appa lachian regions, and Zdorkowski and
Carney (1985) on Oklahoma regions provide insight into the dynamic nature of
small vernacular regions.
Our interest in vernacular regions increased when we became aware of a
changing regional label in East Tennes49
see. The northeastern section of Ten nessee traditionally has been referred to
as "Upper East Tennessee." About six
years ago, however, local newspapers
began to describe the area as " Northeast Tennessee." As time passed the la bel Northeast Tennessee continued to be
used more frequently in the media, in cluding radio and television . This paper
seeks to examine, understand, and explain the ongoing shift in regional labeling in the northeastern part of the
state.
STUDY AREA
As with almost all vernacular regions,
some of the boundaries of Upper East
Tennessee are not well defined. Al though it is not the purpose of this paper to delimit the region of Upper East
Tennessee, a few comments about its
location are in order. In their article, " The
Burley Tobacco Region of the Mountain
South," Durand and Bird described Upper East Tennessee as the area " upstream , or literally " up" the Appalachian
Valley from Knoxville" (Durand and Bird,
1950, p. 277 ). They included 13 counties
in Upper East Tennessee (Fig . 1). Definitions of Upper East Tennessee found
in more recent works and those provided by various agencies in the reg ion
call for a smaller version of Upper East
Tennessee. The most popular map of
Upper East Tennessee is one that is synonymous with the counties served by
several government agencies such as the
Upper East Tennessee Human Development Agency and the Upper East Ten nessee (now Northeast Tennessee)
Tourism Council. Those agencies serve
eight counties (Johnson, Carter, Washington, Unicoi, Greene, Sullivan, Hawkins, and Hancock). and this paper w ill focus most of its attention on that section
of the region (Fig . 2) .
Upper East Tennessee, wh ich borders
North Carolina to the east and Virginia
to the north, lies in two physiographic
regions, the Unaka Mountains and the
Ridge and Valley. The region was the first
part of Tennessee to be permanently
settled, with the first wave of settlement
occurring during the latter half of the
eight eenth century . Upper East Tennessee's frontier history helped to provide
the area with a reg ional identity distinct
from the rest of East Tennessee. A feeling of separateness endures in many of
the area 's residents and some still refer
to the region as First Tennessee. Most
of the tourists who now visit Upper East
Tennessee are attracted to vestiges of the
area's frontier history and to the re-
VA
NC
oI
10
,
Fn~'j'7
20
!
Miles
GA
FIGURE 1. Upper East Tennessee (after Durand and Bird, 1950).
50
40
I
4
N
VA
NC
o
I
5
10
Fn~·2·7
20
Miles
GA
40
I
4
N
M. Strou:l
FIGURE 2. Upper East Tennessee/Northeast Tennessee (area served by Northeast
Tennessee Tourism Council).
gion's scenic beauty and recreational
opportunities.
Before this century the Upper East
Tennessee economy was dominated by
small yeomen farms and self-sufficient
agriculture. During recent decades, however, the region's economy has shifted
to a mixed economy in which manufacturing, service activities, and part-time
farming, especially tobacco farming and
beef-cattle grazing, are major components (Trevena and Garrett, 1976). Urban employment opportunities abound
in the Tri-Cities Metropolitan Area , dom inated by Bristol, Kingsport, and Johnson City (Fig. 2). The opportunity for
rural residents to commute to nearby offfarm jobs has allowed many former or
part-time farmers to continue living on
their farms . At the same time, large
numbers of commuting workers with
non-farm backgrounds have opted for the
amenities of rural life and live in rural
subdivisions or in open country rural nonfarm housing .
THE " UPPER EAST TENNESSEE"
TRADITION
An archival search revealed that the
term Upper East Tennessee was in use
as early as 1845 when one of the re-
gion's newspapers, the Jonesborough
Wh ig, stated that gubernatorial candidate Ephraim H. Foster "is the choice of
the Whigs of Upper East Tennessee"
(Jonesborough Whig , 1845). Additional
evidence for the use of the term is found
in the late nineteenth century. For example, a promotional book titled A Descriptive Review of the Industries and
Resources of Upper East Tennessee
(1885) and Goodspeed's History of Ten nessee (1885) each used the label several times. In one passage in the latter
book the author states that Bristol, Ten nessee is " the largest and one of the
most enterprising towns in upper East
Tennessee" (Goodspeed, 1885, p. 785).
In another section of the book, the Comet,
a Washington County newspaper, is described as "one of ablest Democratic papers in upper East Tennessee" (Goodspeed, 1885, p. 903) . Clearly, Upper East
Tennessee was the common designation for the northeastern part of the state
during much of the nineteenth century.
In spite of its usage the term does not
precisely define the region. It appears that
writers assumed that their readers would
simply understand the meaning of the
term Upper East Tennessee.
The frequent use of the term Upper
51
East Tennessee by Durand and Bird sug gests that it was the one commonly used
to designate a specific area of north eastern Tennessee. The term Upper East
Tennessee was, in fact, used in the article no less than 23 times (Durand and
Bird, 1950). Furthermore, an examination of theses and dissertations at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville also
provided evidence of the dominance of
Upper East Tennessee as the region's
name. Titles of 24 studies contained the
term Upper East Tennessee, whereas
only four used Northeast Tennessee.
An examination of back issues of the
Bristol Herald Courier revealed that the
newspaper had traditionally referred to
the Tennessee area it served as Upper
East Tennessee. A comprehensive examination of the paper for the month of
February, 1976 revealed that the paper
used the label Upper East Tennessee 100
times while not using the term Northeast Tennessee a single time. A complete check of the newspaper for February, 1986 indicated that the paper had
not changed its pattern of regional labeling . In that month the paper used the
term Upper East Tennessee 91 times and
did not use Northeast Tennessee at all.
A year later (1987) the pattern remained,
but the term Northeast Tennessee appeared for the first time. The tally for
February 1987 was Upper East Tennessee 72, Northeast Tennessee 1. A com pilation of the names of organizations,
agencies, and businesses containing the
term Upper East Tennessee also supports the notion that it was the dominant regional label (Table 1).
Although Upper East Tennessee appeared to be firmly entrenched as a
dominant regional label, the substitution
of Northeast Tennessee for Upper East
Tennessee has occurred so rapidly that
after little more than five years of use,
Northeast Tennessee would now appear
to be the dominant regional label.
THE EMERGENCE OF "NORTHEAST
TENNESSEE" AS A REGIONAL LABEL
The push for a shift from the use of
Upper East Tennessee to Northeast Tennessee was the product of agencies
whose missions are to increase tourism
52
and to attract industry to locate in the
region. The first agency to change its
name was the Upper East Tennessee Industrial Development Association, which
became the Northeast Tennessee Industrial Development Association in 1986.
However, the former Upper East Tennessee Tourism Council, now the Northeast Tennessee Tourism Council, takes
credit for initiating the campaign to
change the name of Upper East Tennessee to Northeast Tennessee. According
to Liz Mcllwaine, former executive director of the Tourism Council, travel and
tourism personnel from the region became frustrated because outsiders, especially at travel and tourism shows
outside the region, would often ask,
" Where is Upper East Tennessee?" Representatives from the region got into the
habit of stating that Upper East Tennessee was in northeastern Tennessee and
eventually someone proposed that they
consider substituting the label Northeast
Tennessee for the traditional regional
name. Mcllwaine stated that Upper East
Tennessee was replaced because the
term "is not concise, is confusing, and
it is grammatically incorrect" (McIIwaine, 1989).
Related to the issue of which regional
label to use, the Upper East Tennessee
Tourism Council conducted a marketing
survey in selected metropolitan areas
outside the state and found that persons
surveyed knew little about the region and
were confused by the name Upper East
Tennessee. The council then began to use
the label Northeast Tennessee in its outof-state promotions. The agency found
the new label to be an improvement.
Thus, it decided to initiate a campaign
to encourage the media, businesses,
government agencies, and civic organizations to use Northeast Tennessee to
describe the region and to use that label
in promotions and advertisements. The
Tourism Council began to use Northeast
Tennessee on all its brochures during the
1987-88 fiscal year, and Governor Ned
Ray McWherter approved the agency's
name change to the Northeast Tennessee Tourism Council effective June 1988.
The governor's approval of the name
change and his appearance at a cere-
TABLE 1
Organizations, Agencies, Businesses with Upper East Tennessee in Name,
1988-1992.
Upper East Tennessee Human Development Agency
Upper East Tennessee Chapter of National Association of Retired Federal Employees
Rural Health Services Consortium of Upper East Tennessee
Upper East Tennessee League of Women Voters
Upper East Tennessee Regional Perinatal Center
Tennessee Leukemia Society, Upper East Tennessee Chapter
Upper East Tennessee Golden Gloves Association
Upper East Tennessee Nutrition Council
Upper East Tennessee Mensa
Upper East Tennessee Educationa l Cooperative
Legal Services of Upper East Tennessee
Hamilton Bank of Upper East Tennessee
Home Federal Savings and Loan Association of Upper East Tennessee
Upper East Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame
Upper East Tennessee High School Baseball Coaches Association
Upper East Tennessee Area Infertility Support Group
Upper East Tennessee Chapter of the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers
Upper East Tennessee Regional Juvenile Detention Center
Upper East Tennessee Central Labor Council , AFL-CIO
Upper East Tennessee Veterinary Clinic
Upper East Tennessee Council on Alcohol ism and Drug Dependence
Upper East Tennessee Human Development Agency
Source: Compiled by the authors during the period 1988-1992.
mony to announce the change were part
of a strategy designed to bring pressure
on agencies, organizations, and businesses to adopt the new regional label
(Mcllwaine, 1989).
The efforts to substitute Northeast
Tennessee for Upper East Tennessee
have certainly been successful. In addition to the Tourism Council, numerous
organizations and agencies have included Northeast Tennessee in their
names (Table 2) . There are indications
that the State of Tennessee has played
more than a passive role in the promotion of Northeast Tennessee as a regional label. The name of Tri-Cities State
Technical School was recently changed
to Northeast State Technical Community
College, and a new prison was designated as Northeast Tennessee State
Correctional Center.
The Northeast Tennessee Tourism
Council reported that the media-newspapers, radio, and television- had offered no resistance to changing the re-
gion's name. An examination of issues
of the Bristol Herald Courier reveals that
by 1991 the paper had shifted almost
exclusively to the use of Northeast Tennessee. In February 1991, the paper contained the term Northeast Tennessee 112
times and Upper East Tennessee only
four times. The transition was not with out confusion, however. During the period 1988-90, it was not uncommon for
both labels to appear in the same issue,
sometimes even in the same news article.
An examination of the Kingsport
Times-News for February 1991 revealed
that the newspaper had also begun to
employ the term Northeast Tennessee
to the virtual exclusion of the label Upper East Tennessee in describing the region. During that month there were 100
references to Northeast Tennessee and
only 16 to Upper East Tennessee. The
three major television stations in the region (one each in Bristol, Kingsport, and
Johnson City) have completely adopted
the use of Northeast Tennessee to des-
53
TABLE 2
Organizations, Agencies, and Businesses with Northeast Tennessee in
Name, 1988-1992.
Northeast Tennessee Legislative Caucus
Northeast Tennessee Hospital Association
Northeast Tennessee Industrial Development Association
Northeast Tennessee Council on Children and Youth
Northeast Tennessee Recycl ing Organization
Northeast Tennessee Correctional Cent,er
Society for Quality Control , Northeast Tennessee Chapter
Cage Bi rd Club of Northeast Tennessee
Northeast Tennessee Rehabilitation Hospital
All iance for Business and Tra ining of Northeast Tennessee
University Club of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee
Northeast Tennessee Chapter of American Chem ical Society
Surgical Group of Northeast Tennessee
Better Business Bureau of Northeast Tennessee
Northeast Tennessee Mutual UFO Network
Source : Compiled by the authors.
ignate the section of Tennessee that they
serve.
OPPOSITION TO THE REGIONAL
NAME CHANGE
The campaign to change names has
encountered some degree of resistance.
For example, one of the area's three major newspapers, the Johnson City Press
has a policy of using the traditional label, Upper East Tennessee, and does not
plan to change that policy. The same can
be said for the Business Journal of Upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia (1991) which has questioned the
reasons for dumping a time-honored re gional label, and has suggested, perhaps in jest, that any utterance of
" Northeast Tennessee" result in capital
punishment for the offender.
In addition, some businesses refuse
to use the new label and a few continue
to use Upper East Tennessee in the
company name. Examples include Hamilton Bank of Upper East Tennessee and
Home Federal Savings and Loan Association of Upper East Tennessee. The
latter company stresses the use of the
Upper East Tennessee label in its advertising , as evidenced by the passages
in a recent advertisement:
54
" Through the years you and other East
Tennesseans have made us the
strongest and largest financial institution headquartered in Upper East
Tennessee , .. and we are grateful. In
turn, we have reinvested in you . In
fact, your money stays right here at
home in Upper East Tennessee. So
whatever your banking needs may be,
Home Federal is here for you . Home
Federal ... our Roots Run Deep in
Upper East Tennessee" (Business
Journal of Upper East Tennessee and
Southwest Virginia, 1991 , p. 6),
Others have not only continued to use
the traditional name but have also been
quick to defend its use. One radio station official stated:
"[Upper East Tennessee] has a history rooted in tradition that gives it
an honesty lacking in the contrived
attempt by others to change to another term for the sake of conformity
to terms used elsewhere. If the term
Upper East Tennessee
evolved
through use by the people of this region it reflects an indigenous element. Viva la difference!" (WETS,
1991 ).
As stated previously, Northeast Tennessee would appear to be the domi nant regional label at present. However,
appearances can be misleading and in
this case probably are quite misleading
because we know so little about the acceptance or rejection of Northeast Tennessee at the grass roots level. We suspect but have no evidence that the
majority of the region's people still prefer to use the term Upper East Tennessee.
CONCLUSION
Although there is modest opposition
to "Northeast Tennessee" by businesses, organizations, and elements of
the media, and there is likely greater opposition among the masses, we believe
the campaign to change the regional label has enough momentum to bring
about a complete shift to Northeast Tennessee within a decade or so. As those
in the younger age groups grow older,
it seems reasonable to expect that they
will use the term they have heard on
television and read about in newspapers
for years.
As more local and regional organizations are created in the United States
to promote tourism and recruit business
and industry, new place labels are often
seen as a means to help create new place
images. As Jordan (1978) and Raitz and
Ulack (1981) have shown, such efforts are
designed to create new, positive place
images or to substitute positive images
for existing negative place images. And,
in today's information age, promotional
organizations, especially with government backing and media cooperation,
may be able to change regional labels
rather rapidly. The impact of such activities not only blurs images of existing
vernacular regions, such as Upper East
Tennessee, but it also facilitates the
emergence of new vernacular regions,
such as Northeast Tennessee.
Promotional organizations should be
aware, however, that a plan to change a
regional label should be put into effect
only after careful consideration, because
even a successful campaign to change
the name of a place may have negative
side effects. How, for example, can a region measure the cost of losing a name
that has served its inhabitants well for
150 years? How can a region assess the
impact of having many of its inhabitants
now feel self-conscious about using a
regional name that they have always
spoken with comfort and pride? What
have the promotional groups gained if
the adoption of a new regional name results in the region being less unified than
before the name change? We shall seek
answers to such questions in the next
stage of our research .
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