Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I'm not sure about the "nana" part, but when the caller mentioned having heard the phrase used in New Orleans I immediately thought it might be a derivation from Acadian (Cajun). When I first started working on the Canadian border in 1971, a lot of the rural Quebecois folks I encountered spoke Joual, a speech that is "a dialect of Canadian French characterized by nonstandard pronunciations and grammar…." One of the phrases I heard often was "ti ga," whenever a small male child was present. I eventually found out that it was a reference to "petit garcon" or "little boy;" I'm wondering if "ti nana" is a similar cropping of French from an area where the Acadians settled.