Perhaps you’ve heard an anecdote that goes something like this: A little girl was helping her grandmother get the house ready for some guests. Her grandma said that “the girls” were coming over to play bridge. When she heard this, her granddaughter looked puzzled for a moment and then asked, “Oh, you mean the girls with the grandmother faces?”
Many of the girls in our class have grown up to be grandmothers and we got to wondering how many of them go by the name of Grandmother, Grandma, or have another pet name by choice or because the little ones in their life came up with a creative alternative. So we posed a question about this to the Class of ’65 Facebook group and, as always in our FB conversations, we got an interesting range of comments.
First, the traditionalists. We have two Grandma Saras, Sara Brownlee Briggs and Sara Stubbins, who said, “Grandma is just fine with me!” Kate Brown seconded that: “Grandma I am, no problem.” Maggie House Conger chimed in, “Grandma here!” and it’s Gramma for Shaya Gardner-Hayam.
Then the variations on the classic: Cindy Burke Elder is Grannie and—with perfect logic—her mom is Grannie-Great. Pamela Purdy Stephens is Granny, which, she pointed out, “is the same as Queen Elizabeth II”. She also has one great-grandchild who calls her Grammy. Sounds simple but “his 3-year-old sister is thoroughly confused, as her mother calls me Granny but her brother calls me Grammy, so she goes with the flow and uses both!”
A couple have names based on their given names or initials: Jojo (JoAnn King Okey) and CC (Colleen McLean Calver).
Now for some twists: A very sweet one is Linda Wiedmeyer-Hartmann’s. “I am Grandma Sugar”. Patricia Schneider Mannor is Meme and Pam Steeb Bradley is Mimi because “my mother, who lived with me, was Grandma so I needed to be called something different.” Lynn Hooper Eshelman reports “My granddaughter called me "Ami" from the time she could talk. Who knows why, although I loved telling people that my tiny little one could speak French!”
A grandmother with a rather unusual pet name is Shirley Bauer Varney, who goes by Yaya. Children in Greece are likely to call their grandmothers by that name, but that’s not how it came about in Shirley’s family. She actually wanted to be called “Lolly”, a name she found online on a list of fun alternatives to Grandma, but her little grandson couldn’t pronounce an L, so it came out as Yaya. He’s four now, but it’s going to be Yaya forever. We have a feeling that tiny tot mispronunciations are how a lot of the non-traditional grandmother names in this world get started!
Comments