10 Things Virginians Do That Give Them Away Anywhere They Go

A woman in a Charlotte grocery line asks the guy behind the deli counter if he’s ever had a Virginia ham biscuit.

He hasn’t.

She sighs the way only a transplant can, then spends the next five minutes explaining Smithfield ham to a stranger who never asked.

These are the things Virginians do that give them away anywhere they go.

1. Declaring Hokie or Cavalier

Virginia has two flagship schools, and it only takes one question to sort a Virginian into a camp.

Hokie or Cavalier?

Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia have squared off in the Commonwealth Cup every year since 1996, with every score engraved onto the trophy’s base.

The Cavaliers took the Cup back in November 2025, ending a four-game Hokies streak with their first win since 2019.

Anywhere a Virginian moves, the maroon and orange or the orange and blue comes along in the closet.

Anyone can read the team off the hat.

2. Picking Sheetz or Wawa

The country’s fiercest gas station rivalry runs straight through the middle of Virginia.

Sheetz started in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1952 and pushed south into the western half of the state, while Wawa grew up outside Philadelphia and crept down the coast.

Richmond and Northern Virginia became the real battleground, and the rivalry’s own map still shows Sheetz territory stopping hard around the Blue Ridge.

Ask a Virginian for directions, and they’ll casually work in which chain they stopped at that morning.

It’s a habit.

They don’t even notice doing it.

3. Calling It an ABC Store

Virginians don’t say “liquor store.”

They say ABC store, short for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), a state agency that has controlled every bottle of spirits sold in Virginia since 1934.

Grocery stores and gas stations don’t get a say in the matter.

That’s the law.

A Virginian walks into a supermarket in another state, scans the wine aisle for the hard stuff, and looks confused when a clerk points them toward a completely different building.

A Virginian doesn’t unlearn it fast.

4. Pronouncing Norfolk Their Way

Say “Norfolk” out loud in front of a Virginian, and they’ll wait to hear how you land on it.

Locals say Nor-fuk, not Nor-folk, and they correct outsiders within a sentence or two.

The concert venue The NorVa has painted a sign backstage just to settle the argument for touring bands.

Staunton trips people up the same way.

Locals say Stan-ton, and local lore holds that townsfolk leaned into that pronunciation on purpose during the Civil War, to catch anyone still saying it the outsider way.

A Virginian corrects both, in Chicago, in Denver, anywhere.

They can’t help it.

5. Calm at the Mixing Bowl

Northern Virginia drivers merge through one of the most complicated interchanges in the country without blinking.

The Springfield Interchange, better known as the Mixing Bowl, tangles Interstate 95, Interstate 495, and Interstate 395 into 50 ramps and 20 lanes.

Visitors white-knuckle the wheel.

A Virginian just changes lanes on instinct, three exits ahead of when a navigation app even mentions it.

Put that same driver on a five-lane highway in another state a decade later, and the habit hasn’t gone anywhere.

They still merge early, aiming for an exit that isn’t even close yet.

6. Quoting Their Own Slogan

The same tourism slogan has run in Virginia's ads since 1969, and Virginians never let anyone forget it.

Virginia Is for Lovers first ran in a 1969 issue of Modern Bride, dreamed up by a Richmond ad agency that was just trying to sell honeymoon trips.

It stuck.

A Virginian will work "lovers" into a sentence about barbecue, weather, or a bad breakup, and mean every word of the joke.

Move a Virginian to Ohio, and they keep making the joke anyway.

They'll still slap it on a bumper sticker, a coffee mug, or a text to someone back home.

7. Serving Ham Biscuits for Everything

A Virginian shows up to a funeral, a wedding, or a tailgate carrying the same tray.

Ham biscuits.

Smithfield, Virginia earned the nickname ham capital of the world, and thin-sliced salty ham on a small roll shows up at nearly every occasion in the state.

Despite the name, many Virginians build them on a soft dinner roll instead of an actual biscuit.

Nobody corrects the mismatch.

A Virginian who moves to another state still shows up to the potluck with a tray, then spends the whole party explaining why everyone else's version tastes wrong.

8. Judging Every Crab Cake

Order a crab cake in another state, and a Virginian studies it like a suspect.

A proper Chesapeake Bay crab cake holds mostly jumbo lump blue crab, a light binder, and a shake of Old Bay seasoning, nothing more.

Filler is the enemy.

A Virginian will send it back, or at least complain about it the whole drive home.

They'll also argue, without being asked, that Maryland gets too much credit for a bay Virginia shares.

That argument never ends.

9. Gifting a Bag of Peanuts

A Virginian rarely leaves the state without a bag of peanuts for whoever they're visiting.

Not the small kind from a gas station rack.

Virginia-type peanuts carry the largest kernels of any variety grown in the country, close to twice the weight of the runner peanuts most other states grow.

Bigger, always.

Suffolk has processed and shipped them since Planters built its plant there in 1913, and the city still calls itself the peanut capital of the world.

A Virginian hands over a tin like it's the nicest thing in the room because to them, it is.

Nobody else at the party understands why Suffolk built its whole identity around a peanut.

10. Softening Every Long Vowel

Hampton Roads carries an accent that doesn't sound like the rest of the South at all.

The Tidewater accent stretches certain vowels out, so "half" comes out closer to "ha-alf" and "first" can slide toward "fuust."

It's soft and slow, and it comes from the throat, not the nose.

A Virginian who grew up near the water carries a version of it their whole life, even after decades somewhere else.

Neighbors ask where the accent is from.

They rarely guess Virginia first.