What do you call one of these?​

Whether sliced with a filling or on the side of a hearty bowl of soup, bread roll was the most popular term, favoured by 28% of respondents. Although an overall winner, the term does seem to be more popular in the south of England, and among those of working age.

In the far north and northeast of England, the most commonly used word is bun, while baps are packed into lunch boxes across Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire. The bap is replaced with a barm as we head into Liverpool, Manchester and Preston. It becomes a breadcake in parts of Yorkshire, including Sheffield, Leeds and Hull. All of these terms continue to be used across generations.

Cob outranks all other words in much of the East and West Midlands, with a stronghold in the city of Birmingham, but a move across to a batch in Coventry in Warwickshire. However, younger speakers do not seem to use either term, which suggests that they are decreasing in popularity over time.

This bar graph animation shows how the use of these words has changed over time.


Interactive words map

Click this button to view the different responses to this question on a map.

You can tick the boxes on the side to select a word and show the places the word was used by the people who completed The Great Big Dialect Hunt. This map is based on where people grew up, not where they live now.