David and I have been talking about this lately and I’m curious to hear what other people do.
What do you call your mother? What do you call your grandmother? What do you have your children call you?
Whenever I talk to Peanut, I always refer to myself as “mama”. I’m not sure why since I did not grow up with this terminology. I have noticed among my southern blogging friends that using the term “mama” is very common, even for adult children.
When I was growing up, we called our grandmothers by their last names such as Grandma Smith or Grandma Brown. I don’t know, but that seems kind of formal to me now that I think about Peanut calling her grandmothers and grandfathers by those names.
So, I’m curious to hear what other people do and how it probably varies regionally and culturally. I’m looking for inspiration! 🙂
I’ve always called my parents Mom and Dad, with the occasional Mommy and Daddy. Grandparents are a bit different. Mom’s parents are Gramma Midge (or just Gramma) and Papa, and my dad’s are Graggy (or Grams) and Grampa. I am not sure how we chose the spellings of Gramma and Grampa, but that’s how we’ve always done spelled/said them, not that there is much difference in sound when spoken. Graggy was actually a mutation of “Grandma” that occured when my cousin, the oldest grandchild, was learning to talk.
As for others around here (in Ca), my nephew calls my parents Grandma and Grandpa, his other grandparents Nana and Papa, and my mom’s mother Grammy. My dear friend’s mother is Granny to the grandkids she has.
Because my husband’s parents are divorced and remarried, we have a surplus of grandparents (plus our son had great grandparents and great GREAT grandparents at the time of his birth!), and we thought the children might get confused if they all went by the simple Grandpa/Grandma terminology. So, before our first was born, we asked each of them to pick a name (which is also a family tradition on my side of the family). Here is what they chose:
Granddad/Granmama
Grandfather/Grandy
Papa/Gigi (sounds like hard “g” rather than “j”)
It’s worked for us, and also helped avoid step-grandparents being addressed by first name, which we have noticed can be a common alternative.
Well,
My dad is just Dad, and for my daughter he is Grandpa. My father in law is called Papa by me since he and my husband share the same name. He is Papa to my daughter as well.
My mother passed away, so my mother in law is Grandma to my daughter and just Mom to me. My dad’s girlfriend is “Sa-sa” to my daughter which is a variation of her name.
My sister in laws are Auntie So and So and brothers in law are Uncle So and So. In our family it is easy to get a nickname so sometimes Uncle Todd is called Uncle Dodd, or Auntie Beth is called Ab-ba. Which is ok with me since my nickname growing up was Turkeyhead.
When I was little, it was “Mummy and Daddy”. We’ve all grown out of that…it’s just “Dad” and “Mum”. 🙂 My parents get called Nanna and Papa by the grandies. I called my own grandparents: Nana and Pop (maternal), Grandpa and Grandma (my dad’s dad and his wife), and Nan and Uncle John (my dad’s mum and her husband).
I call my parents Mama & Daddy. H calls his Mami & Papi (Mah-mee, Pah-pee). My kids call my parents Nana & Nano (Nan-uh, Nan-oh). They call H’s parents Tata & Papabu (Tah-tah, Pah-puh-boo). They call my husband’s grandparents Tata & Abuelo (Ah-way-loh). Both the grandmother and great-grandmother chose to be called Tata, so one is called Tata Nilsa and the other is Tata Carmen to differentiate.
My FIL’s nickname is a funny story. He wanted to be Papabuelo (Pah-pah-way-lo). I thought that too long for my one year old firstborn so I had her say Papa. Then, my FIL had open heart surgery. When my baby saw her grandfather’s new big scar, she cried, “Papa boo-boo! Papa boo-boo!)The name stuck. This quickly became Papa-Boo and the oo was changed to a u to reflect Spanish spelling. Ten years later he’s still Papabu and all seven grandkids call him this.
My husband’s mom struggled with what to have our boy call her… nana, beppa, oma, granny, she finally settled for gramma. My parents are Oma and Opa (dutch roots)
As parents we will be mom and dad. Right now he calls us “ma-ma” and “da-da”
We have a lot of older folks in our church and they are either auntie/unca ________ or gramma ________ or Mr ____________ 🙂 They just love it!
We are a family from the deep South (for many generations!) and I still call my parents Mama and Daddy!
Our Children call my parents- Marmee and Papa J.
Our Children call my Grandparents (set 1) Mimi and Pawpaw
Our Children call my Grandmother (set 2) Granny
Our chlidren call my mother-in-law- Gram
My great grandmother- Na-Ma
And our children call us “mama and daddy” as well. So much fun to read all of the names!
My kids interchange calling me Mommy and Mama. Daddy is always Daddy for some reason!
We call grandparents Memow, Gigi, Gran, Pop, Papa…..
Our sons call my parents Grammy and Grampy and my husband’s dad Grandpa or sometimes Abuelo (Spanish). We left it up to the grandparents to decide what they wanted to be called and simply refer to them in that light. We are just Mommy and Daddy to them.
I called my parents Mommy and Daddy until I hit middle school and switched to “Mom” and “Dad”. My brother calls my parents “Mother Dear” and “Father Dear” – especially when he wants something! 🙂
We’ve always called our grandparents Grandma and Grandpa. We would add the last names when we talking to each other to avoid confusion, but when talking to them directly it was/is always “Grandma” and “Grandpa”.
Hey, Sallie!
I’m a Southern girl raised in the South (North Carolina). All my life, my grandparents were Mamie and Pawpaw. I still call my grandmother Mamie, as she is still living. I had one grandfather on the other side that I knew who we called Pa. I don’t know why. He died when I was 5, but I’ve always referred to him as Pa ever since.
My husband and I don’t live anywhere near our siblings or grandparents, and I’ve wondered how it will all play out when our kids get together when they’re older. I wonder if we’ll have to go along with the names that the older cousins picked for my husband’s parents because they named them first? I wonder if there’ll be confusion if the kids from different families are calling the grandparents something different?
We don’t have to worry about this with my side of the family. My sister-in-law and my brother came up with a very thoughtful idea. They knew that we were struggling to have children, and they were going to beat us to it, so when they were pregnant with my nephew, they suggested that we come up with the grandparent names for my parents together. I appreciated this thoughtfulness during infertility more than they’ll ever know. It made us feel like we would have children one day and that they cared about us feeling like a part of the family building process. So now my parents are Nana and Papa for everybody. =)
All my children called me “mama” when they were small, perhaps because it’s easy to say? “Mama” and “Dada” transitioned to “Mommy” and “Daddy” as the children got older. My oldest (six years old) occasionally just calls me “Mum” but when the kids want to be really affectionate they’ll revert back to “Mama”.
My mother’s family is from Germany so I call her parents “Oma” and “Opa”. My father’s parents are from Finland so they were “Mommo” and “Papa”.
My mother couldn’t see herself as “Oma” since her mother is still alive, so she decided she wanted to be “Granny”. My children call my parents “Granny” and “Grandpa”. My husband’s parents decided they wanted to be called “Nana” and “Papa”.
I am Mommy and my mom was Mommy. DH is Daddy and my dad was Daddy ( I think dh called his dad, just dad). I called my maternal grandparents Mom-mom and Pop-pop. My paternal grandparents are Gramma and Grampa. My great grandmother was Nana. My husband’s grandfather was Poppie. We have been calling my husband’s father Poppie to continue the tradition. We have also continued the tradition of Mom-mom and Pop-pop with my parents. My husband’s mom is Grammy.
My parents are Mom and Dad, occasionally Mommy and Daddy. I’ve taken to calling my Mom “Mama”, which seems more cuddly and affectionate than the others. Borrowed that after living in Germany. When I was upset, I’d call my Mom “mothER” with a disgusted sigh and eyeroll, ’cause I knew she didn’t like that. What a stinker I was!
My grandparents are:
Grandpa C (stands for the last name) and Grandma Gloria (which is her name 😉 )
Grandma C (used to be married to Grandpa C)
Grandpa Charlie (also Papa Charlie) and Grandma Nellie. For me, since my name is “Jami-without-an-e”, my Grandma Nellie called herself “Gramanelli” and Grandpa Charlie “Papacharli”. I didn’t catch on to that until I was a teenager.
Growing up, I had four sets of grandparents since my parents were divorced and remarried. My brother and I called them all Grandpa and Grandma, although later on we realized that one of our grandmas wanted to be called Gram so we started calling her that. If we needed to clarify who we were talking about, we said Grandpa ____ (last name). I used to marvel at my cousins who had different names for only two sets of grandparents! However, using the same names for different sets of grandparents certainly did not diminish the uniqueness of each of the relationships. Each one was (and is) special.
Oh! And my fiance is Filipino, so his grandparents are Lolo and Lola. I’d like to keep that for our kids, with their Filipino relatives, but we’ll see, since his mom may want to be called something else. I guess we’ll let the grandparents decide, and then see if the kids change them during the “learning to talk” phase. 🙂
It’s really fun to read all the replies!
I’ve always called my mom, either mom or momma. I refer to myself as momma to my kids and my 4 year old either calls me mom, mommy or momma. My kids call my parents Grandma and Papa. My husbands parents are with Jesus and when we refer to them it’s always Grandma and Grandpa _____(my husband’s last name). We have a family that has adopted my kids and we call them Grandma Barb and Papa Al. I always called my grandparents “Grandma and Grandpa (last name) when refering to them and if they weren’t there, when we are with them they are just grandma and grandpa. My great-grandma growing up was always Granny. My grandma (her daughter) wants to be called Granny, but that’s a hard one for me to do because there’s only one “Granny”. Hope that helps a bit.
Stacy
My kids still call me “Mama,” which is what they learned to say first. It’s sort of stuck, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they start calling me “Mom” when they get older.
My parents are called “Nana and Big Daddy,” and my husband’s parents are “Grandmama and Granddaddy.” We let them pick out their own names. 🙂
Hello,
My children still [in 30’s] call us Mama and Daddy – well we’re in Georgia! Of interest: for some reason as teenagers they started refering to me as Mamasan – a pet name of sorts, I guess. And all their friends called me Mama Meg. It is so strange to get emails from a young couple who are missionaries in South America greeting me, Hi! Mama Meg. I love it. It is wonderful to have a special relationship with your children’s friends that go beyond them. As for Grandparents, my folks were
Grandma and Grandpa, his are GranMary and PapaDan. My husbands grandmothers [both widows] were called Mama Allen [Last name] and Mama Julie [first name] no hard and fast rule. I am now Grammy but he is Grandpa – they other pair [?] are Grandmother and Grandfather. Some are Nonnie, Nannie, Nonney, Meme, MeMaw [I hate] and PawPaw [ditto],PePaw [ug].
I have a new grandson, 3 weeks old. What joy.
Miss Meg