#dialect maps

That Bug

To try to minimize bias towards the various names for the relevant bug, I will refer to the kind of bug the survey is about as “That Bug” or “The Bug.”

For reference, here’s the list of names for That Bug that I included in the survey, each of which was mentioned as a vernacular term for The Bug by at least 2 plausibly credible sources:

Child of the Earth Devil's baby Jerusalem cricket Potato bug Sand cricket Sand puppy Stone cricket Skull cricket

 Quick Caveat

A major assumption of the current analyses is that respondents selected “I am unfamiliar with this bug” if they were unfamiliar with That Bug, and, correspondingly, that any terms that respondents selected actually reflect terms that they are familiar with and would use. It’s possible that some respondents might not have actually recognized That Bug but selected one or more of the options anyway, which I do not have the data to test for directly. I suspect the term “potato bug” might have been selected occasionally by respondents who had heard the term being used in reference to a different kind of bug (as both roly polies and Colorado potato beetles are colloquially known by that name), which would mean that “potato bug” may have been selected more often than it “should” have. This is just a hunch, however.

Sample

A total of 291 respondents completed the survey by the cutoff date for the current sample (April 30, 2023), with 254 of those respondents being from the US, 7 from Canada, 7 from the UK, 5 Australia, and 13 from other countries that had less than 5 responses each (for a total of 32 responses from countries other than the US). Five respondents did not provide any location-related information.

(For the record, the sample skews so heavily American because I blazed the post advertising the survey to a US target audience, since That Bug is a North American insect.)

For the American respondents, 71 were from Western states, 52 were from the Midwest, 47 were from the Northeast, 80 were from the South, and 2 were from the non-continental US, based on the US Census definitions for those regions. Two respondents indicated that they were from the US but did not provide any additional region-level information. Note that a small handful of respondents mentioned being from multiple different states. For the sake of consistency, such respondents were grouped according to the first state that they listed.

 Familiarity with That Bug

Respondents were considered “familiar” with That Bug for the purposes of this analysis if they did not select the “I am unfamiliar with this bug” option AND provided at least one “valid” name for That Bug, either by selecting one of the pre-existing name options or by specifying something in the “other” field that could be reasonably understood as a name specifically referring to the relevant bug. “Other” responses that were overly vague (e.g., simply “cricket”) or that referred to a different kind of bug (e.g., “mole cricket”*) were considered “irrelevant” for the purposes of this definition.

*Here’s a link to a video of a mole cricket burrowing into some dirt. It’s not really relevant to this post, I just think it’s neat :) Anyway, I can definitely see how someone could mistake That Bug for a mole cricket—they look fairly similar, especially from the photo provided in the survey

By this definition, 101 respondents were familiar with The Bug and 190 respondents were unfamiliar with it, for an overall total of 34.7% of respondents being familiar with The Bug.

Among American respondents, the familiarity rate was 37.0%, while for non-American respondents it was 18.8%.

Overall familiarity rates by US region are depicted in the graph below:

Statistically, the South and West have significantly higher familiarity rates than do the Midwest, Northeast, or non-American regions (which do not differ). It’s probably worth mentioning that That Bug’s natural range is mostly restricted to the Western states within the US, at least as far as I have been able to discern.

Here’s the familiarity rates by geographic subregion (although note that the sample sizes start to get pretty small here, so take them with a grain of salt):

To sum up, only just over a third of the sample were familiar with That Bug, although the familiarity rate varies substantially by region. But, among those who are familiar with The Bug, what names did they call it?

Names for That Bug

The following graph depicts the pattern of responses across all completed surveys:

A strong majority of respondents selected “I am unfamiliar with this bug” and nothing else.

Restricting the graph to respondents who were familiar with The Bug (as defined previously) produces the following:

Most respondents who were familiar with That Bug referred to it as a “Jerusalem Cricket” and nothing else (40/101, 39.6% of “familiar” respondents), with the second most common response pattern being “Potato Bug” only (21/101, 20.8%). Interestingly, the third most common response pattern was the specific combination of “Jerusalem Cricket” AND “Potato Bug” (16/101, 15.8%). The remaining name options (and combinations thereof) occurred relatively infrequently among responses.

Adding up the number of occurrences of each name among familiar respondents (which takes into account cases where multiple names were selected) produces the following graph:

Some Notable “Other” responses:

One respondent entered “Kudüs cırcır böceği,” which to my understanding is the Turkish for “Jerusalem cricket.” I was unsure of whether I should count it towards “Jerusalem cricket” or not, but I ultimately decided not to. If you disagree with that decision, pretend that the “Jerusalem cricket” counter is 1 higher for all graphs that include the non-USA data One respondent entered “Satan’s fetus,” which I initially thought was a joke, but after looking into it a little, there is evidence that “Satan’s fetus” is actually another existing vernacular name for That Bug. Neat! Also notable among the “other” responses entered, one respondent noted that they and some other people that they know refer to That Bug as a “jailbug”, due to its stripes. I absolutely love that as a name for The Bug and would love for it to be adopted more widely. Regardless of whether it’s widely used enough to qualify as a regional name, it will always be a name for That Bug in my heart :)

In summary, “Jerusalem cricket” is the most commonly used name overall, and occurred a little over 50% more frequently than did the second-most-common term, “Potato bug,” which in turn occurred about three times as frequently as did the third-most-common term, “Sand cricket.” But, does this pattern hold across regions?

Names for That Bug by Region

(Note that all of the analyses in this section include data from “familiar” respondents only—which is to say that respondents who selected the “I am unfamiliar with this bug” option or who only provided an “invalid” response have been excluded.)

Here are the names selected for That Bug, broken out by region:

For all major regions of the US, “Jerusalem cricket" was the most commonly used name for That Bug, followed by “Potato bug”. Other terms were uncommon, although a couple of apparent regional differences emerged. In particular, “Child of the Earth” occurred exclusively in the West (where it was selected by 3 respondents, for a selection rate of 9.7% among familiar respondents). Additionally, “sand cricket,” was chosen by Southern respondents more frequently compared to respondents from other regions (6 occurrences, 16.7% of “familiar” respondents).

That Bug was rarely familiar to non-American respondents, but “potato bug” was the most commonly used term among that subpopulation (with 2 responses). “Jerusalem cricket”, “sand cricket”, and “sand puppy” were also each selected an additional time by non-Americans, as was the previously mentioned Turkish phrase “Kudüs cırcır böceği” (which, if counted as equivalent to “Jerusalem cricket” would eliminate the very slight preference for “potato bug” among non-American respondents).

Here's a map with a brief summary of responses per region (US only):

Sample sizes become quite small when looking at US subregions, but, for reference, here’s the relevant graph:

Interestingly, the pattern observed for the broad Census regions (Jerusalem cricket > Potato bug, by a moderately large margin) does not consistently hold among individual subregions. Notably, the subregions vary widely with respect to how frequently “potato bug” was selected relative to “Jerusalem cricket”, with some regions showing only a slight preference for “Jerusalem cricket” over “potato bug” (South Atlantic, East South Central, Pacific West, New England), while “Jerusalem cricket” was substantially favored in others (West South Central, West North Central, Mountain West). The East North Central subregion of the Midwest in particular was notable for showing a slight preference for “Potato bug” over “Jerusalem cricket”, in contrast to any other US region.

Do these differences reflect true regional dialect patterns or is this just random noise? I unfortunately don’t know the answer to that, but I am intrigued.

In any case, here’s a map depicting the pattern of responses by subregion (although, again, please note that the sample sizes per subregion are generally tiny, especially when restricted to familiar respondents only, so take the subregional patterns with a major grain of salt!):

Summary and Conclusions

That Bug is relatively obscure, with only a minority of respondents (roughly a third, overall) being familiar with it. “Jerusalem cricket” can probably be considered the most uncontroversial name for That Bug, as it was selected by a majority of respondents who were familiar with The Bug and was the dominant name for The Bug in almost every region and subregion investigated here. “Potato bug” was also commonly selected as a name for it, although much less frequently than “Jerusalem cricket.” All other possible names were uncommon and potentially regional.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the survey! And special thanks in particular to everyone who commented about their experiences with (or general reaction to) That Bug, or who left some kind words. To all the entomologists, aspiring entomologists, and general bug enthusiasts: it was wonderful reading about your love of little critters like That Bug. Reading the comments genuinely made my day :)

As I mentioned up top, the survey remains open, so you can still participate if you’d like to! I can’t guarantee that I will publish updated results, but I would like to revisit this topic in the future with more data. I’d love to see if the subregion trends hold up, and if I ever got a lot more data, I might even be able to look at state-level trends (although I’m almost certainly being too ambitious thinking about that!).