1742 Billy Boy

I like how our language grows. If grow is the right word. It's interesting how names for people end up being names for whole classes of people. At least that's what looks like happened with the term hillbilly.
Where did that come from anyhow? Was the Billy meant to refer to one guy at first and then eventually a group of guys like him? Like John Doe refers to any unidentified corpse? Here's comes a bunch of hicks, and I bet every third one of them is named Billy-Bob. The one's that aren't named Bubba anyhow.
I like Bubba better. Language evolution missed an opportunity there. Too bad we didn't call backwoods folks hillbubbas.
But "hillbilly" stuck, perhaps because Billy is such a easygoing name, and hillbillies are by and large a relaxed group. The etymology dictionary says the word originated from the term "hill" for, you know, the hills, and "Billy," a masculine name. There you have it. Nothing too complex. So simple even a hillbilly could understand it.
So question: Can a woman be a hillbilly? I'm betting they call an older version a "biddy" anyway. As in, "That old biddy really was really cranky." Like Granny on the classic TV Show, "The Beverly Hillbillies."
The etymology dictionary says Biddy comes from slang for an Irish maidservant. Which came from the Irish pet form of the name Bridget.
So an old cranky hillbilly woman could be called A hillbiddy.
Maybe when she went to town she would be "gussied up." Another name for a type derived from a name for a person. Perhaps because the original Gussy was short for Augusta, which sounds like a pretty dolled up hoity-toity person.
Hello Dolly, meet Gussie, she's Biddy and Billy's cuzzin'.
Cuz theys from them-thar hills.
America ya gotta love it.