Not going to attempt a poll on this, because there are just too many variants. But what did or do you call your grandparents? I ask because we’re working this out with a new baby. My husband uses funny names for grandparents - his grandmother was “Memaw,” his grandfather is “Pepaw,” and so forth.
Personally, I called my paternal grandparents “Grandma” and “Grandpa,” my maternal grandparents are/were “Grandmother” and “Granddaddy.” My great-grandmother was “Granny.” My own kids refer to my parents as “Grandma” and “Papa.” My grandmother remains “Grandmother.” My husband’s parents are “Mimi” and “Papa” and “Grandfather C___” (last name.) Pepaw remains Pepaw - which I find odd, but I have certainly heard it before.
For reference, I am a white female, age 40, from SE Georgia, USA.
Paternal side: Abuelito and Abuelita. Abuelo/a is just Spanish for “grandfather/mother”, the “ito” is a diminutive but it can also, as in this case, indicate familiarity/love.
Maternal side: Avi (Catalan for Grandfather) and Yaya (Aragonese dialect of Spanish for Grandmother). The curious thing is that it is her who grew up speaking only Catalan and he who was the son of an Aragonese woman and who grew up speaking only Spanish (both of them were born in Barcelona).
My sister in law is from Aragon, the kids’ grandparents get to be Yaya or Yayo (Firstname). The great-grandparents are called Yaya, Avi and Abuela María; when a grown-up claims to be confused by that “Yaya”, the Kidlet specifies “Dad’s Yaya, not my Yaya!” (the Kidlette is 18mo, so only starting to speak).
Both sides of grandparents are/ were Grandma and Grandpa. I’m from Southern Ohio, as are my parents. My husband’s grandparents (on both sides) are Grammy and Papa. He’s also from Southern Ohio, but his parents are both from Northern Ohio. The decent on one of his sides and one of my sides is Eastern European, and the decent on the other of each of our sides is German and Irish.
I suspect when we have kids, my parents will be Grandma and Grandpa, and his parents will be Grammy and Papa, although I’m going to put a strong vote in for Grandma and Grandpa all around. I’m not a fan of “cutsy-wutsy” kind of names, and Grammy and Papa are kind of boarding on that for me (although, I’m willing to admit it’s because I’m not used to them).
I’m originally from Texas, and I called my maternal grandparents “Mama” (pronounced maw-maw) and Papa (pronounced paw-paw). Those names came from what my mother called her maternal grandparents, who were from Oklahoma.
My paternal grandmother got “Mama” as well by default, although I don’t think she ever liked the name. My sister usually calls her “Grandmother [Lastname]” now, which is what we called her mother (my great-grandmother). We called my paternal grandfather “Granddad [Lastname].”
My wife and I let my parents pick what they wanted to be called by our son. My son calls my mother “Mama [Firstname].” My stepmother picked “Nanan.” I think she picked a different name for her other grandchildren who came along a few years later, but good luck changing her name now as far as my son is concerned!
My grandmothers were “babcia” (usually corrupted to sound like “Bah-chee”), Polish for “grandmother”. My maternal grandfather was “Pop”. My paternal grandfather died when my father was a boy.
MilliCal called her maternal grandmother “Grammy” and her maternal grandfather “Pop-Pop”, while the paternal ones were “Grandma” and “Grandpa”
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be too flippant. One of my grandfathers was born in 1877- I can’t recall much of him at all let alone calling him anything.
Both sets of grandparents died long before any of us kids were born. I never refer to them as “my grandparents” even- it’s always “mom’s mom” or “dad’s mom” etc.
Well, my grandparents are long gone, but when I was a kid, my paternal grandparents were grandma and grandpa.
My maternal grandparent was called “Nannie” (by everyone, including my parents). My maternal grandfather died before I was born, but we called Nannie’s second husband “Morris.”
Maternal grandparents were Nana and Papa; Papa died when I was around 8 or 9, Nana remarried several years later but we always called her second husband by his first name. None of us kids knew my paternal grandfather (he died when my dad was still pretty young); paternal grandmother was Grandma.
When the grandkids started rolling in for my parents, my mom became Nona and my dad took on Papa.
There were major issues when my stepdaughter started having kids. At the time of the first one’s arrival, there were three sets of grandparents (Mr K and myself, the ex-wife and her husband, and my stepdaughter’s in-laws), plus 10 great-grandparents. You would not believe the drama over who was going to be called what. I stayed way the hell out of it by choosing ‘aosda,’ which I was fairly certain would be uncontested.
My Grandpa was married, divorced and remarried, and both women were and are my grandmothers. I called them Grandma Firstname and Grandma Firstname because they had the same last name. I called my grandfather Grandpa Lastname, however, because he was my only Grandpa.
