Birthplace of “Dixie” — Citizens State Bank Site

The word 'Dixie' — the nickname for the American South — may have originated at the Citizens State Bank on Royal Street, which printed ten-dollar notes with 'DIX' (French for ten) on the reverse. Riverboat men heading to New Orleans talked about going to 'the land of Dixies,' which became 'Dixieland,' which became 'Dixie.' The theory is disputed but widely cited, and Daniel Decatur Emmett's 1859 minstrel song cemented the word in American vocabulary. The bank building is gone; the name it may have given the South is not.