2881: Coke As Soda: A Slightly Different Eponym Nov 10, 2024

Lots of brands' names take on the generic meaning of their main product, from kleenex to hoover and so on. Plenty of these are basically global and some belong to specific regional dialects. That said, it is a slightly different story with how ‘Coke’ became the generic term for a soda in much of the Southern US. 

While usually a brand becomes eponymic from traditional market dominance, a sort of top-down approach, Coke on the other hand, which eventually developed into the most popular of the sodas, had an early lead, and before there was much centralization or even bottles, soda jerks would make their own syrups and also call them coke. This, later reinforced with market dominance, has helped to maintain the generic use of ‘Coke’ as soda.