Why are left-handers called “southpaws”? (2015)

Which is also why left handedness is so often literally translated to 'north-hand' in various Australian, South American and South African languages.

The "paws" in "southpaws" clarifies that it is a derogatory term, suggesting that the left-handed are clumsy.

Could it be that the sense of south in "going south" is a back formation from southpaw?

Etymonline documents "going south" as meaning "vanish, abscond", tracing it to 1920's America: "American English, probably from mid-19c. notion of disappearing south to Mexico or Texas to escape pursuit or responsibility, reinforced by Native American belief (attested in colonial writing mid-18c.) that the soul journeys south after death." It could be that the "turn bad" meaning derives from that.

EDIT: Strange, I definitely read the word "southpaw" somewhere in the last few days, and I remember learning that it was a term for left-handed people. Now I can't find it anywhere in the circle article, the HN comments [2], or the Reddit thread [3].

Little things like this really make me want to sign up for fetching.io again.

EDIT 2: Ahh, I found it! It was in a Quartz Daily Brief [4] news summary that I had skimmed earlier today:

> Left-handed people are more likely to be geniuses. The trait indicates greater connectivity between brain hemispheres, which may explain why southpaws seem to have an edge at math. ([5])

js2, I'd be really interested to know if that's why you posted this, or if it was just a coincidence.

[1] https://qz.com/994486/the-way-you-draw-circles-says-a-lot-ab...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579728

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6i5pa0/how...

[4] https://qz.com/daily-brief/

[5] https://qz.com/1006075/left-handed-people-are-more-likely-to...