MetaChat - Grandparent Names

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17 May 2011

Grandparent Names - What Do/Did You Call Your Grandparents?→[More:]My maternal grandparents were Nonnie and Grandpa, sometimes Grandpa Bill. Although I'm not sure why as he was our only grandfather. My paternal grandmother was Gramma Margaret. My paternal grandfather died when my father was a kid and we're unsure of what his name really was.

My nieces and nephews (and great-nieces and -nephews call my mother Gran.

I have step-grandkids but they just call me by my name. It's never been suggested that they call me by any other name. The mister is Grandpa. Both of the blood grandmothers are Grandma (the other grandfather died when my daughter-in-law was a kid).

post by: deborah at: 12:39 | 34 comments

Grandma and Grandpa.

posted by danf 17 May | 12:44

Same as danf.

posted by Splunge 17 May | 12:47

Nana and Papa. Which I hated, because nobody, nobody else from my peer group called them that.

posted by Melismata 17 May | 12:53

Grandma and Grandpa

posted by Obscure Reference 17 May | 12:58

Grampy and Grammmy.

My father's father was Granpda Ralph.

My Mom has already decided (after spending some time with her sister's grandkids) that she wants to be Granny.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 17 May | 12:59

I had all 4 grandparents and 6 out of 8 great-grandparents alive when I was born (last grandparent died in 2004) so here's all their names (being the first in my generation I got to name all of my grandparents, and my mom and dad got to name THEIR grandparents):

Maternal Grandmother: Honey
Maternal Grandfather: Pop
Paternal Grandmother: Mimi
Paternal Grandfather: B-Dad

Maternal (Paternal) Great-grandmother: Nanny
Maternal (Maternal) Great-grandmother: Neenaw
Maternal (Paternal) Great-grandfather: Pappy
Maternal (Maternal) Great-grandfather: Pa-paw

Paternal (Maternal) Great-grandmother: Mamaw
Paternal (Paternal) Great-grandmother: Bestemor (Norwegian for "grandmother")

posted by WolfDaddy 17 May | 13:02

I never had a full set. Mother's mother was Grandma, Dad's father was Granddaddy Rob, and his second wife was Myrtice.

When my parents became grandparents, my mother was asked what she wanted to be called, and her first idea was "Your Majesty" (she settled for Grandmother; my father was Grandaddy).

My sister just became a grandmother, and she went with "Nana," and my brother-in-law is "Papa Mole" (Mole is his nickname; don't ask me why).

posted by JanetLand 17 May | 13:21

We were pretty run-of-the-mill, with Grandma and Grandpa on both sides. My great-grandparents were a little wacky, though; both sides had nicknames based on their own names. These are the ones who were around when I was alive:

GG (great-grandma Ina Mae: mother's mother's mother)
KM (Karl Magnus: mother's father's father)
Vangie (Evangeline: his second wife, who was something like 30 years younger but was still both old-fashioned and awesome)
Ma Belle (Isabelle: father's mother's mother, an awful Scottish battleax)

I do like the Swedish method: Mormor (mother's mother), Farfar (father's father), Morfar (mother's father), Farmor (father's mother), etc.

My favorite will always be from Mr. Rogers: Nanu and Ding Dong. (Am I the only one who remembers that?)

My parents will be the only grandparents my imaginary kids have. They're already in their early 60s; I wonder what they'll do.

posted by Madamina 17 May | 13:22

Not including the ones who died before I was born:
Maternal grandmother: Nana
Paternal grandmother: Grandma

Maternal (maternal) great-grandmother: Nanny
Maternal (maternal) great-grandfather: Pop-pop

Paternal (maternal) great-grandmother: Nanny Lastname
Paternal (maternal) great-grandfather: Paw-paw

My parents are grandparents now, and my mother's "grandma name" is Mimi, my father's "grandpa name" is Pops.

posted by titus n. owl 17 May | 13:24

maternal: grandma Lillian and grandpa joe
paternal: grammy and pop-pop

posted by rmless2 17 May | 13:29

Nana and Grandad.

(one D or two there - they both look wrong?)

My daughter calls her grandmothers "Grandma Di and Grandma Janice" and Grandad is Grandad.

posted by gaspode 17 May | 14:02

Paternal grandmother: Grandma
Paternal grandfather: Grandpa

Maternal grandmother: Patti (Tamil for grandmother, pronounced PAH-tee)
Maternal grandfather: Thatha (Tamil for grandfather)

posted by peacheater 17 May | 14:04

Grandmom and Grandad: maternal grandparents
Grandma and Grandad: paternal grandparents (I never really liked this grandmother)

Nana and Pop-pop: my uncle's parents, related by marriage, but they treated us as their own grandkids. These are the names I chose to have my kids call my mom (and stepdad while he was around). I loved my Nana and Pop-pop.

Muummie, pronounced "moo-mee" (I don't think I'm spelling it right): Finnish for grandmother. That's what my kids called their late grandmother (yes, she was from Finland). Kinda liking that when my kids have kids.

posted by redvixen 17 May | 14:10

Maternal: Grandma & Grandpa
Paternal: Grandma Grace (paternal grandfather died years before I was born)

My favorite answer to this question came from Mr. Rogers of children's television fame. He addressed this on his show, and though I haven't seen it since I was a kid I'm pretty sure I remember it correctly. He called his paternal grandparents "Grandmother Rogers and Grandfather Rogers" and his maternal grandparents "Nanny and Ding-dong."

posted by Hugh Janus 17 May | 14:14

Gramma and Grampa (sometimes name). My mother's biological father was out of my life from when I was 4 until I was 16.

posted by brujita 17 May | 14:19

Hugh, did you see me mention that upthread? (I had to look twice; it looked almost verbatim!)

posted by Madamina 17 May | 14:20

I tried! I really did try to read everything, there are just so many grandparent names upthread!

*blushes*

So I guess the answer to your question is, yes, there are others who remember everything they learned from Mr. Rogers.

posted by Hugh Janus 17 May | 14:29

Paternal: Nana and Gramp

Maternal: Grandad (my maternal grandmother died during WW2)

posted by Senyar 17 May | 14:55

Paternal: Gramma and Grampa. (like Grandma and Grandpa, but lazier.)
Maternal: Grammy and Papa.

No idea why.

posted by Comic Sans-culotte 17 May | 15:10

I called my mom's parents Grandma and Grandpa.

When they asked my dad's mom what she wanted to be called, she said, "Let him come up with something." I called her Grammy, and it stuck. Really well, apparently, because I notice it's become really common with people of my generation to have a "Grammy". ;)

posted by Eideteker 17 May | 15:10

The only grandparent who was alive in my lifetime was my mother's mother who we called Too-Mommy for reasons lost in the mists of family history. My mother is known to her grandchildren as Nani which is Hindi for maternal grandmother.

Oddly, I just read an article yesterday that mentioned that someone commissioned a history of their house and found out that Fred Roger's grandparents owned it.

posted by octothorpe 17 May | 15:17

Yay for good grandparents! I wasn't particularly fond of my father's mother either, JanetLand. My younger brother was born with a cleft palate and hair-lip (as it was called back then). She told my mother under no uncertain terms that it was her (my mother's) fault because her family (my grandmother's) didn't have monsters in it and she (my grandmother) wasn't going to have anything to do with it (yes, it). My father, in one of the few good things he did, said if she wouldn't acknowledge my brother, she didn't have any grandkids. She came around, but it took a few months.

I adored my maternal grandmother. She was a lady who could, and did, swear like a sailor when appropriate. I'll have to ask Mum why it was "Nonnie". All I recall is that my grandmother chose it because she didn't like "granny" or "grandma". Her mother (my gg-mother) was Nana (she died before I was born). Nonnie is close to the Italian "Nonna" but we don't have an Italian ancestry.

posted by deborah 17 May | 16:21

Grandma and Pop-Pop, with first names added if we needed to clarify.

posted by JoanArkham 17 May | 16:22

Only one I ever met was Grandpa.

My Mom was Nana to her grandchildren. My ex-m-i-l is Gramma to my son. Ex-f-i-l was Grampa.

posted by theora55 17 May | 16:58

Did everyone have a grandmother they weren't too fond of? Mine was my mother's mother; my ex's was her father's mother.

posted by Eideteker 17 May | 17:13

My grandfathers both died before I was old enough to call them anything.

I truly hated my mother's mother. I am still glad she is dead. My siblings, who had a higher tolerance for her, called her "Grandma." I refused to write to her, talk to her on the phone, or visit her, so I never had to call her anything pleasant.

I adored my dad's mother. Weirdly, we referred to her as "Granny."

posted by bearwife 17 May | 17:18

dead

posted by govtdrone 17 May | 19:11

Mine were both Gramma and Grampa, but oddly, we used their last names rather than first names (Gramma Bates, Gramma Clifford, etc).

My mother's mother, whom I was very close to, was nicknamed "Grambo" after an unfortunate incident when her blood sugar was low and she slugged my uncle in the stomach for allegedly cheating at cards. TOTALLY not her nature normally, but a funny story in retrospect.

The only great grandparent I had was my mother's mother's father, and he was called Papa.

posted by evilcupcakes 17 May | 20:59

OH, evilcupcakes, that's hilarious -- so was mine! Her email was GRAMBOB@aol -- we referred to it as "gram-bob," but she said my cousins called her Grambo [B.] after encountering her in the garden with a bandana around her head.

Also, she was right militant, but that is neither here nor there.

posted by Madamina 17 May | 22:51

Grandma and Grandpa.

However, I worked with a woman at my job before I went to Japan, and she was telling me about her parents and in-laws telling her about what they wanted to be called as grandparents. One that stood out was "Grandma Teapot."

One of her family members told her that she wanted to be called "Grandma Teapot."

Is that even allowed?

posted by gc 17 May | 23:31

Grambo - love it!

posted by deborah 18 May | 01:04

Maternal (NZ born and raised) - Grandad/Grandma
Paternal (British born and raised) - Grandpa/Nanna
Not sure if the geography makes a difference and I have no idea of how this was arrived at.

My kids call my mother Grandma and my partner's mother Nanna (there are no grandfathers in the picture on either side). This was simply a happy coincidence that both were already called that by other grandchildren.

posted by dg 18 May | 02:27

I was lucky and had all four grandparents alive and involved for the first 15 years of my life. We called them Grandma and Granddad [surname]. I'm 32 now and still have one grandma, now just call her Grandma.

posted by altolinguistic 18 May | 04:04

I don't recall any specific names I had for my grandparents, but I can report that my niece calls my mom and dad "GEE-ga" and "BOP-py", respectively.

posted by cortex 19 May | 10:47

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