I remember as a young boy from NYC visiting my brother at a Marine Corp facility near Albany Georgia and turning on the lights in his house and being literally assaulted by about 20 of those huge flying monstrosities called palmetto bugs and it scared the crap out of me. The rest of the time I was there I always carried a baseball bat whenever I turned on the lights at night.
Palmetto bugs is a southern euphemism for cockroaches. Southern women did not want to admit they lost the battle, so the renamed them.
They did the same thing with "Yankees".