Firefly Or Lightning Bugs? Well, That Depends On Where You Live

ACROSS AMERICA — Many of our favorite childhood memories of summer nights are tied to lightning bugs, the flying insects that, to our squealing, youthful delight, shine a light from their abdomens. Or — and we realize we’re drawing a battle line here — are they correctly called “fireflies"?

The question is vitally important as warm temperatures bring us outside more at night. No one wants to be that person standing in the middle of an Iowa cornfield waxing poetically about fireflies. Right? Right?

What you call these prolific bugs that seem to bring the starlit sky to the ground level depends on where you live. That’s according to a poll of 14,000 Americans conducted by YouGovAmerica, a London-based research and analytics company.

The results of the lightning bug versus firefly poll are not absolute — so that person in Iowa yammering on about fireflies can claim to have brought the term inland from one of the coasts and perhaps spark some conversation about other traditions introduced to their new ethos.

Or they might get into a war of words.

People take their local vernaculars seriously.

So, if you live in the western third of the country, call them fireflies if you want to go along with the crowd. In those areas, 3 in 5 people, or 60 percent, call the insects fireflies. People who live in Pacific and mountain regions are unified on that.

About 3 in 5 people in Upper Midwest states call the insects lightning bugs. In the South, about a third of people prefer the more fanciful term fireflies over lightning bugs, and about half of people in the Northeast call them lightning bugs.

But who are we to argue? What do you think?