Terms of Endearment

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

In his Joy of Yiddish, Leo Rosten tells a story about a mother who calls her son Bobala.

This is a Yiddish word. Do you know this one, Bobala?

Yeah, it means grandmother, right?

Yeah, but sometimes you call children that because you’re suggesting that they have a future in which they themselves will be a grandmother or a grandfather.

Oh, really? I didn’t know.

And also it’s kind of like baby.

It’s got the same kind of buh-buh-buh sounds, right?

Yeah.

And he tells this anecdote here, which I wanted to share with you.

There’s a young boy.

He’s going off to school for the first time.

His mother, of course, is very nervous.

And she’s like, Bubbola, do you have your lunchbox?

Bubbola, do you know your class assignments?

Bubbola, do you know where to get the bus?

Bubbola, are you nervous?

Bubbola, do you love your mama?

Take a little sweater.

Take a little sweater, Bubbola.

Are you okay?

Here’s a little extra money for lunch, Bubbola.

And so the boy goes off to school and comes back at the end of the day.

And his mother says, Bubba, how are you?

How was your first day?

What did you learn today, Bubba?

And he goes, I learned my name was Irving.

And then what I’m getting at here is we have these pet names for each other.

We don’t call, I don’t call my wife Sarah necessarily.

I call her sweet names that I’m not going to share here.

I call my son a bunch of sweet names.

Some things like kitty cat or puppy dog or sweetest boy and monkey butt.

Monkey butt, nice.

I also call him sweet tater man.

But we have these names, and they have backstories and histories.

And it occurs to me that this mother is no different from any other parent, right?

You want to express your affection, and you do it, of course, through language.

Yeah.

So we have these terms of endearment for our family, and I just kind of wanted to throw it out there and see what do you call your sweetie or your kids or anybody else that you love and have affection for, or something besides their real name or their nickname, just this term of affection.

I’m struck, by the way, how many of these have to do with food.

So I’m really looking forward to this.

You know how we are about food.

Yeah.

Sweet pea and sugar pie and a honey bunch and all this stuff.

Well, in our house, it’s fofinha, which is a Portuguese word that means a fat little cuddly baby.

So fofinha or fofi.

I’m imagining a little Cupid with rosy cheeks and little crisp lips.

That’s sweet.

Just soft and smells good.

What are the sweet terms that you use in your house?

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