Cackalacky

Cackalacky is a nickname for North or South Carolina, but where did the name come from?

“It doesn’t look like anyone has come up with a convincing answer yet, and it may well just be an invented ‘nonsense’ word that sounds vaguely like Carolina,” Goebel wrote in an e-mail.

Paul Jones, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of ibiblio.org, is probably the closest anyone has come to identifying the word’s origin.