Obscure
nickname for a person from the state of
South Carolina.
Sandlapper magazine, founded in
1967, seems to have popularized it; their web site says one of the earliest known references is from an "
1865 traveler's
diary. The chronicler described as a 'piney-woods sand lapper' a backwoods woman in western SC
seen
spitting
tobacco in public." An
Arkansas history uses the term also, as an insult
mountain dwellers used for those who lived in the
bottomland along
rivers.
I can't find any particularly complimentary origins, but South Carolinians seem to be willing to reclaim the term.
In third grade, my school there watched a TV show on South Carolina history which had a theme song with these lyrics (and from a few online lesson plans and the testimony of my ten-year-old brother, this is still being taught almost twenty years later):
We are good sandlappers,
Yes, we're good sandlappers,
And we're mighty proud to say
That we live
Yes, we live
In the very best state
Of the USA!
Sources:
http://www.sandlapper.org/slwhat.htm
http://www.rootsweb.com/~arrandol/DaltonMisc.htm