Elizabeth in Burlington, Texas, says she always referred directly to her grandparents using their last names, as in Grandma and Grandpa Bell, or Grandma and Grandpa Van Hoose, but her husband calls his own grandparents Nanaw and Pawpaw. The Dictionary of American Regional English lists at least 100 different names for grandmothers, including Big Mama, Mamaw, Gram, Nana, Grammy, and at least that many names for grandfathers. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Lots of Names for Grandparents”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I’m calling from Burleson, Texas.
Hi, Elizabeth. Welcome.
I had a question about grandparent naming. Growing up, I referred to my grandparents by using their last names, like Grandma and Grandpa Bell or Grandma and Grandpa Vanhoof. And it wasn’t until I met my husband and got to know his family that I realized other people may not follow the same recipe. He had one set of grandparents, just Grandma and Grandpa, and then the other set had totally different names of Nana and Papa. And I was just curious if there was any kind of regional or generational differences in how grandparents kind of get their names or how they choose their names, perhaps.
Yeah, I’m not aware of a whole lot of regional differences. I know I grew up calling my grandparents Granddaddy Porch and Granddaddy Barnette, and that tends to be more Southern than a lot of the other ones. The granddaddy.
Yeah, granddaddy. But they’re pretty well distributed throughout the country. In terms of doing a last name, though, I’m not aware of a specific way that that occurs.
Yeah, when you use that, when you talk to them directly, what do you say or what does he say? You’re obviously not going to address someone by grandpa, whatever their last name is, are you?
Oh, I totally did.
You did? None of my grandparents are here anymore, but, I mean, we would call them up, hi, Grandpa Bell, hi, you know, and that was how we addressed them. And actually speaking to my father-in-law, he was raised that way also with the understanding that if you used any other name than a last name, it was kind of a sign of disrespect in his family. It wasn’t really explained to me that way as a child, but that was kind of the formula we used. And I just didn’t know if there’s any tendency in certain maybe regions or other populations where it seems like some grandparents are named based on what the child can pronounce as opposed to what’s expected for them to call the grandparents.
Right. A lot of times the kids come up with the name, right? There are some trends. Martha had said there’s not a lot of regionality, but there is a tiny bit, and it’s a little far from your question, but I think it’s worth sharing. For example, in the South, Big Mama is more common there than anywhere else. It’s not the most common, but it’s common enough. Mama is a very southern one, especially Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi. Mama as well. Graham is far more common in northern New York and New England and a little bit around the Great Lakes. And then Nana and Grammy, more common in the northeast, kind of generally spread all around the northeast. All in all, if you look in the Dictionary of American Regional English, which asked people, what do you call your grandparents? They came up with at least 100 terms for the grandmother and at least 100 for the grandfather. Like, there is a lot of diversity about what we call our grandparents in this country.
That’s really interesting. I just didn’t know if there was any trends, but I guess the trend is there is no trend. One thing that you said, Martha, do you think that there’s some of that Southern politeness there and the idea that you’re going to use the last name with the title?
That’s what I was thinking. It’s more of a title than a familiar term, right? More of a sign of respect. I also wonder if it reflects families that lived more closely together so that you’re distinguishing between this particular grandfather and the other one because you all live in the same town.
Okay. Well, thank you all very much. I’m curious if maybe other people had other things, but if you have more than 100 terms for each family figure, then that’s a lot to go from.
Well, you know, we will hear about that from our listeners because people love talking about this one for sure. Elizabeth, we may have to do a survey just to really kind of organize this and get some location data to go with these terms to see if we can figure out a little more clearly what is happening with these. We’ll see. All right?
Great. Thank you.
Thank you for your call. We really appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Well, what do you call your grandparents and how did it come about? We really do want to know. Send us your emails to words@waywordradio.org or tell us on the telephone, 877-929-9673.
My sisters and I called my dad’s mom Mamagram (“mummagram”). I think this was because we called our mom Mama (“mumma). Our cousins did not use this term. I’m wondering if anyone else uses this, or if it was my oldest sister’s invention? My dad’s dad was regular old Grandpa (with last name if trying to be clear which grandpa we were referring to).
We called my mom’s dad Grandpa Charboneau. This format may have started out of respect in the older generations (?), but by the time we came around, it didn’t feel formal at all. It was just his name to us.
We’re from Michigan.