many names little time

Reddit's AITA (Am I The Asshole) sub is exactly the kind of place that combines 'infuriating' with 'irresistible trainwreck' with a healthy dose of contrariness in every post.

AITA for letting my 7 year old daughter call my husband "daddy", against the wishes of her biological father (my ex husband)?

Weirdly enough, though, that nightmare fuel isn't the point of this entry. Reading this on reddit and the comments, I remembered how many times this has come up in advice columns, about the massive divide of meaning between being called Grandmother and being called Grandma (huge difference, really) to the point of estrangement before the grandchild has even finished developing internal organs, much less vocal cords. And on one hand, I understand on the visceral level, because yes, words have meaning, but when it comes to names--mom, dad, mommy, granny, grandmother, grandfather--there's a sense that this is not just personal preference, a but something not unlike a cosmic transformation of self or a mystical coronation of a high king or god emperor by divine right.

'Hey, I want to use Nana as my grandmotherly name, but no big, how about Grans?' <-- myth or heresy or something????

'Upon my ascension to grandmotherhood, I take the name Nana, Highest of the Grandmothers, set above lesser grandmothers, and all grandchildren will acknowledge me at the best of their grandmothers as natural law. All usurpers who attempt to falsely claim 'Nana' I will meet with my blade and prove my claim on your dead body and knit your shroud myself' with the clear expectation that everyone will be 'Yes, she who takes the name Nana is the best and most loved Nana obviously, that's just how it is' and all the grandchildren have but to address her by that name to gain their adoration. <-- sounds legit

Does that sound insane? Yeah, but its the only vaguely comprehensible reason why two people would go to the mattresses, die on the hill, meet with pistols at dawn, declare war, and burn the world to settle the question of who gets the name 'grandmother' and who gets 'grandma'.



When Child was born, I had no particular preference or awareness I was supposed to have strong feelings about this, which I'll get to in a second. So when Child started talking, it was generally my first name because we lived with my parents and sisters and that's how everyone addressed me. My mom and dad both picked their grandparent names before Child was born and they trained him into it, and to this day, I don't think they really got why I didn't train him into a specific name for all purpose (Mom should have though).

This resulted, however, in what I thought was normal (I was twenty-two, there was no internet, come on): me becoming she of many names and variations, but with some fixed use ones. My name was general issue, but 'Mother', 'Mom', 'Mommy' were all mapped to strict behaviors, specifically parental ones. "Mother" = he's pissed at me; 'Mom' = to get my attention as this is some kind of mom-related situation and not just 'look at this cool bug I just found' and 'Mommy' = DEFCON SOMETHING COME NOW. When he was younger--before age ten, I want to say--there were about ten different 'Mom*' or "Mam*" variations to convey role + urgency of situation by length of time it took to get through the 'm's. Can't lie, he still does that with the 'm's.

By now, though, there's dozens; remixes of my wallet name, my online name, combine with my fandoms, our fandoms, shows we both like or both hate, or something he knows will annoy me.

When I said I had no particular preference, that's because I assumed 'preferred name' just meant 'until your offspring find names they like better' so it seemed silly to get invested in "Mama" when he might like "Momi". And to be fair: I got to name Child and set his identity in the eyes of God and man. Whatever he picked to call me, I might hate it, but it's not like anyone else would call me that. He, OTOH, was stuck with being called the name I chose until he was eighteen and get a legal name change and learn all about bureaucracy and people forgetting his new name half the time for years.

I assumed that because that's pretty much what I did and no one ever told me I was doing childhood identification of the formal titles of people in key kinship positions super wrong in doing nothing like that.

In memory,a sampling: Mommy, Mom, Mama (emphasis first syllable), Mama (emphasis second syllable), Mother, MumMum, Ma Mere, Maman (I was reading books with french and thought it looked cool but didn't know how to pronounce it so that's phonetical), Ma Damoiselle (my mom taught me to pronounce it correctly when she realized a pattern was emerging), Miss Damoiselle, Ma Petite, Ma Petit Chou, and Ma Cher/Ma Cherie as a play on her birth name; some are more rarely used now, but all of them still exist. All of these I;d fix on for a couple of months before mixing it up with former names and then finding another name I liked.

My father's mother, who was my babysitter for most of my pre-K life and afterschool, and lived with us until she died, had dozens: Bamma (I was bad with Gs as a toddler I guess?), Banma, Gramma, Grandma, Nanny (my cousin Mandy called her grandmother that and it sounded super cool), Grandmama (emphasis on first ma) and Grandmama (emphasis on second ma), Grams, Gramdmere, Grands, Granny, etc.

My dad had about three, but to be fair, there was no french that sounded dad-like. My dad's dad was Papa and my mother's mother was always and forever Mimi and her stepfather (Mimi's husband) Grandpa, no exceptions.

My sisters have dozens (maybe hundreds), but in the way of siblings, affection wasn't entirely a motivator for some so I'm not sure they're applicable now. I have a standard three or four for them with remixes of their first names and a couple of extensions of their names in different languages because when I heard the translations, I thought they sounded beautiful, or plays on their wallet name like 'ma soeur belle' (eventually I learned to pronounce it correctly, and you really don't know what kind of crime against language I was committing on soeur using English phonics rules and a lot of gumption).

Child has roughly thirty that have literally no relation to any form of his legal name and double that using variations and syllables of his first and middle to play with and that's the tip of the iceberg because there's a vast quantity that are in-jokes and shared references. Currently I call him Tiny Alien, because it just never stops being funny saying that to someone six feet tall who once lisped he wanted to be kidnapped by aliens (green ones, like Martians) and sure, he was three, I could have let it go in the nineteen years since, but why?

Friends aren't excluded from this either, but because they generally don't have specific titles attached to their position in my life based on degree of kinship, it's more something lower than wallet name/online name/nickname but much higher than pet name or endearment because they're specific to them. If they're not into being called anything but their chosen name, including all forms of endearment, I don't do it, but I never really stop wanting to.

It's not like it's hard to work out the pattern here; the longer I know someone, the greater the degree of comfort and intimacy, the more names they acquire. The why is many reasons--some inexplicable--but they're not random, any more than Child's names for me were--my mom, my grandmother, my son, my best friend, your awesome cannot be contained by a single name, lets get a few more on there. If this was ancient Rome, I'd see to it that any letter sent to you would require one scroll just for our full name: praenomen, gens, and so goddamn many cognomens, it would be epic.


I do get part of my attitude about names now has been formed by having a top three name for the year of my birth and remains popular. When I was in Finland, the 'J' sound was a work in progress for a lot of the kids in my age group and younger, and for their parents and most adults, if they spoke English, they learned it later in life. While I'd like to say being like "no don't worry, Yennifer's great," was entirely motivated by wanting to avoid everyone feeling self-conscious and not be a gross American, and yes, that was there, but a very real part was hearing someone call me Yennifer and for the first time in my life having a name of my very own and not shared what felt like half the goddamn country and three to ten in any given space not including the many variations of goddamn Jenny. It was maybe one of the nicest gifts I've ever received from anyone; a name they made right there, just for me.

[Note: Pronunciation was Yen-ne-fer with the n's separated so one ends the first syllable and the other starts the second and the i slid into an e sometimes; I loved hearing it.]

Which is why when someone asks "Do you pronounce Seperis like [this] or like [this]?" my answer is invariably "Yes."

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, but its the only vaguely comprehensible reason why two people would go to the mattresses, die on the hill, meet with pistols at dawn, declare war, and burn the world to settle the question of who gets the name 'grandmother' and who gets 'grandma'.

My father's parents were reportedly firm, when Mom was pregnant with me, on wanting to be Grandma and Grandpa. I'm their oldest grandchild. Thing is I'm not my mother's parents' oldest grandchild, and my mother's parents were already Grandma and Grandpa to my cousins. The truce my mother negotiated was, her parents would be Grandma [given name] and Grandpa [nickname], and my father's parents would be Grandma and Grandpa [surname]. That last bit was Grandma's idea, apparently, and it's long since fallen off anyway. (Since spring of 1997, any living referent for "Grandma" or "Grandpa" had to be Dad's parent; the given-name suffixes are always used when referring to Mom's.) But I do have to say 'truce' because because reportedly it was a siege.

…I am spacing on what Dad's siblings' kids (the oldest of whom is several years younger than I am, and all of whom have always lived a lot closer to Grandma and Grandpa than we have, going off to college aside) call our grandmother, but "Grandma" is not it. This has perplexed my mother for twenty years.

[ivyfic]

'Upon my ascension to grandmotherhood, I take the name Nana, Highest of the Grandmothers, set above lesser grandmothers, and all grandchildren will acknowledge me at the best of their grandmothers as natural law. All usurpers who attempt to falsely claim 'Nana' I will meet with my blade and prove my claim on your dead body and knit your shroud myself' with the clear expectation that everyone will be 'Yes, she who takes the name Nana is the best and most loved Nana obviously, that's just how it is' and all the grandchildren have but to address her by that name to gain their adoration. <-- sounds legit

Yup. My mom decide her grandmother name was Nani before my brother or I reached childbearing age. My dad is Grandad, as was his dad before him, and his dad before him. Non-negotiable. Fortunately my brother's in-laws were okay with what their first grandchild dubbed them in toddlerhood, Maui and Bubba. I got stuck with "Auntie" at some point when I wasn't looking, and if I could walk that back, man, would I.

While I normally don't call out my real name in fan space, since you brought up yours--I'm also a Jen. But not a Jennifer. (Mine is uniquely googleable, so you'll have to take my word for it.) I have been pissed at people calling me Jennifer my whole life. I tend to say "Not a Niffer" to clarify. Yes, I could go by my actual name, but people consistently mispronounce it, and that's nails on a chalkboard to me. This is what my parents get for giving me a top three nickname for my generation, and a one-of-a-kind actual name.

[seperis]

Oh my God, you a Jen* forcibly inducted into the Jennifer nightmare on the grounds of nickname? I am so sorry; bad enough to be born into the goddamn collective, but this is outright kidnapping.

In your position, I'd be outright screaming my name at people on first meeting just in case and add a helpful phonics card. I speak on behalf all the Jennifers; you do not deserve this.

[ivyfic]

Yeah, it's kind of a weird thing. At this point I introduce myself as Jen and my work email is Jen, so people know for years thinking I'm a Jennifer, whereas in my head I'm so clearly not. I guess it's kind of like Rumpelstiltskin, having a true name no one knows (unless they looked at my linkedin). I should also say my name isn't just a variant spelling--I've never met anyone with a name that sounds like mine, and I've never found it as a first name for anyone else on google. So it's not like people would think to guess it.

The weird thing for me is, about five years ago I changed careers, which meant restarting at entry level. This effectively put me with a bunch of peers that are a decade younger than me. And, for the first time in my life, there are no other Jens. It's bizarre. I've always had two or three in my immediate vicinity. But it was such a narrow band of popularity, it dropped off by the nineties. So if I remove myself from my cohort by a decade, no more Jens.

This of course means that it is a name that will be strongly associated with our age--when we were little girls, it was a little girl name. When we are old biddies, it will be an old biddie name (like Bertha or Dot). And then two generations after that it will be rediscovered and become wildly popular again.

[thedivinegoat]

My name is Joanna, and my sister is two years younger than me. And she couldn't say Joanna. So I became Nana to my immediately family, (and some of my further family, although that developed into JoNana for various Aunts and Cousins.

I am now Nana/ Auntie Nana to my nephews and nieces which pissed my sister's MIL off something chronic as she had wanted to be Nana, but my sister said that given that I'd be Nana since my sister was learning to talk - tough titties. She'd have to do with Nanny . My sister also delights in find the most twee and hideous Nana (as in Grandmother) birthday cards she can for me.

In day to day life I go by Jo, but the number of people who try to call me Joanne or Josephine astounds me, firstly I am a JoannA never a JoannE, secondly my sister is Josephine not me, (yeah, my parents claim it wasn't deliberate, but given both of their names started with J I call foul) and thirdly, I introduced myself as Jo.

People (and I include myself in this) are weird about names.

[libitina]

In my family, we didn't attach any significance to the form of the word because they'd always be followed by the person's name. (e.g. Aunt Fran, Cousin Connie)

But Grandmother was still a piece of contention. My mother's mother died when I was about 4. And my father's mother did not respond in the most gracious way. Reportedly, the first words out of her mouth were, "Well now they can just call me grandma." (instead of grandma/mother + Bertie). So no matter what, we were forbidden to ever forget to add her name to the end of her title.

[tozka]

Re: the grandma name thing: my maternal grandmother was adamant that she wanted to be called "Grandmama" like some French heiress*, but when my oldest cousin started talked she could only say "Mamaw." So then EVERY grandchild called her "Mamaw" and apparently this drove her a little nuts-- she would even sign her letters/cards with Grandmama for like 15 years after becoming Mamaw.

She also wanted to give ME a nickname that was 100% not the nickname my parents wanted to give me, and she eventually caved after like 3-5 years.

Very stubborn lady, but in a repressed-emotions "nice Christian" kinda way.

*She was not French.

[kore]

I take the name Nana, Highest of the Grandmother

Nanny Ogg would approve!

My IRL name is still pretty unique (lol) in the US, very common in the British isles tho. My parents had very plain names -- my dad's legal name was a diminutive and he hated that -- so they wanted to give me something Different, and boy did they hit the jackpot.

[dine]

grandmother names are *important*, yo

at birth, my niece had five grandmothers/great-grandmothers. figuring there'd be a huge deal, my mom opted for Oma (German for grandma) and one great-grand was already Granny - the others were quickly tagged with Grandma X - her dad's mom became Grandma Fran, and her maternal great-grands were Farm Grandma and (not to her face) Other Grandma

when she became a grandmother, my sister opted for Nana (my mom is still Oma)

[ruric]

When I was little my grandma's were Nanan + surname. Note the third n was very much pronounced - definitely nanaN and not Nana! (I don't know whether that's a British thing or a Yorkshite thing).

As I grew up they became Granny or Gran but never, god forbid, grandmother.

One had a husband who died before I was born, one when I was three but as far as I can recall I did call him grandad.

Like Child I had a multiplicity of variations for my parents from plain mum and dad (and however long I dragged out the vowels in those words was a pretty neat measure of my emotional state) but an abrupt Mum or Dad yelled really loud was my DEFCON 1.

Mother and Father were for when I was cross or being super-formal to make a point, and occasionally going as far as Mater and Pater if REALLY cross. I think I grew out of using Mummy and Daddy quite early on.

My given name is Josephine - and that has gone through a number of iterations. From a kid to well into my 20s everyone shortened it to Josie. Except when my mum was cross it was always "Josephine Helen surname" because why the heck not.

In my late 20s I shortened it down to Jo - it was so much easier but I still use Josephine in formal situations and always when signing official documents!

My ex was Greek though had been in the UK for years so had no problems with a "J" sound. The rest of his family had fun with it - closest they got was an unusual combination of slamming dtz together!

[torch]

Okay, now I really appreciate having a first language where the words for maternal grandmother and paternal grandmother are different.

Also I admire your relaxed attitude! Most versions of my name sound fine to me -- Russian, Somali, whatever -- but I will admit that when English-speakers try to say it the Swedish way, I wince.

[seperis]

Hindi so far is my favorite because they do have the 'j' sound, but not quite the 'je' sound in Hindi phonics as it shows up in English. Don't get me wrong, the sounds are there, it's just not what anyone who speaks Hindi jumps to first for the most part when seeing 'Jen' at teh beginning of my name. I'm learning Devanagari and found (I think) the common applicable 'j' consonant-vowels, so found where the soft 'z', 'h', or something like 'zh' after the 'j' appear. On occasion, there's a faint jzha, I think, but that may be wishful thinking because I love how that sounds when I translate my name.

*take all above with a grain of salt; I'm still working on my listening skills to connect Hindi script with sounds so it's still best guess on what's going on linguistically and Telegu is still a future dream.

Everyone is super respectful about trying to speak English names just like we are with Hindi and Telegu names (can't lie, they're an order of magnitude better about pulling it off first try), but I cant' help but look forward to when they've been speaking Hindi for a while to someone and talk to me before codeswitch kicks in; ideally I get the jzh equivalent and it is so pretty.

Iv'e now heard my name in roughly twenty-two languages--maybe more--and so far, my native tongue is the worst way to say it. English just does not appreciate the potential of a double consonant middle and what can be done with e and i in the right hands.

Which is to say, I am not surprised English attempts at your name mangle it even when trying to get it right; when in doubt, it flattens everything it can and the only hope is if you get someone south of the mason-dixon for consonants and vowels that should be dragged out. I'm not saying they'll be right, but it gets a lot closer.

Interesting note: learning Hindi really benefits from me switching to southern drawl rules.

[edenfalling]

Familial names are weird. I distinctly remember switching from calling my parents Mommy and Daddy to Mom and Dad, because I decided the former were "babyish" and I wanted to sound more "grown-up." This happened when I was around 9 or 10 and my brother was 6 or 7. I decided for both of us and he went along with me. We switched from "Auntie So-and-so" to "Aunt So-and-so" in our teen years for similar reasons.

On my mom's side of the family, my grandparents were Grandma Doris & Granddad; on my Dad's side, they were Grandmother Ruth, and Grandpa & Ardis. I am not sure why all three women had their given names as part of the title, while the men were just referred to by generic familial title. I believe Ardis once floated the idea of being Tante Ardis, but by that point the naming pattern was firmly set and I had no interest in changing. (As a kid, I was very fixed on each person having one singular, specific name. This may be related to never having a nickname of my own, and to my brother only ever being referred to by one single nickname.) Weirdly, great-grandparents were always "Great-granny Firstname Lastname" and I have no idea what my parents' reasoning was for that.

[ravurian]

I too am a Namer of Things. Even outside the family there are a cast of common characters that we know by nicknames - The Wrong Blonde; Tom Travolta (and his Gauntlets of Power); Stiff Girl; Spaghetti Woman; Andy With-the-Hair also had accompanying hand gestures to indicate that his hair was shoulder-length (and then, when he got it cut, he became Andy With-the-Hair-without-the-Hair, and the hand gestures went to shoulders and then the top of the ears); etc.

My mum (the Demoness, Duchess of Hades, First Lady of the Inferno, Empress of the Nine Rings, Queen of Hell, as she became known in my teenage years) is almost always referred to as The Duchess by all of my friends both on and offline, and consequently by some of the family now, too. When my cousins and second cousins began sprogging and she rose upwards in the generational hierarchy, Great Auntie Katie became too much of a mouthful for the more junior members of the family, and she became Greatie Katie (I'm quite proud of that one). She's also a bit of speed demon on the road, so people in the family refer to speeding as going Katie Miles An Hour ('you made good time'; 'Katie Miles An Hour, the whole way'; etc). I'm charmed by that. My mum is too, frankly. But she always had tons of nicknames anyway; she's the sort of person who a) acquires them naturally, and b) should never be invoked directly without some degree of deliberation. Say her name three times and she's sure to appear. We're all a bit like that in my family anyway.

Names do have power, but titles are conferred. It's so much more fun to see them evolve naturally from specific context, right?

[out_there]

're the grandparents, we went with surnames. Granny McDonald, Granny Grayston and Granny Phillips (known not so affectonately as Granny Grumps behind her back). Grandfathers had a little more variety: Granddad (for the one grandfather we saw semi regularly), Granddad Grayston, Papa and Pompa. For someone with seven grandparents due to divorces and remarrying, its kind of amazing that there was only one I knew growing up and there were years when we barely saw him. Extended family is not my thing.

[lilacsigil]

Another grandparent-with-surname user! I had Nana Smith and Nana Jones and Granddad (only one of those) but I never hear that usage anymore.

[laurajv]

we used “grandpa john” and “grandpa steve” internal to the family, and “grandpa [surname]” to outsiders. it never occurred to me that might be unusual until today!

[azurelunatic]

When I was in the oven, my parents discussed names. Maybe Mommy and Daddy, maybe Mama and Papa, who knew?

At some point in the process, my dad's obnoxious friend from work asked, in his Boston accent which made the question even more obnoxious: "What's the kid going to call you? Daddy?"

Nothing would do but that Dad puffed himself up to his full height and proclaimed: "The child will address me as Father Lastname, Sir!"

Mama got me to say Mama fairly quickly. They got "Fa-Shir" out of me, and Mama convinced Dad that FatherSir was close enough.

And so they remained Mama and FatherSir until about 2005 when I learned some terrible things and after that he was "my grandmother's son" and "my mother's husband" and his first name for a few years, and I eventually started acknowledging the relationship by calling him Dad.

[azurelunatic]

My grandparents were Grandma Firstname, Grandpa Firstname or GrandfatherSir, and the other set were just Firstname (died before I could talk) and Ampom (died while I couldn't say Grandpa yet).

[laurajv]

my brother’s first wife told my mother that the first grandchild “chooses” what the grandmother will be called and all other grandchildren have to use that name. my mother said “huh” and proceeded to ignore the situation.

my father is a nicknamer. to this day he calls me Hunca Munca (for example). Most of my siblings have nicknames from him, too: Hawkeye, Pink, Snowball, and Mouse. (Two of them don’t and we don’t know why.) I don’t like my father but I did pick up the nicknaming thing. Older child has several elaborations on their name plus “Bunny”; younger child is complex bc they are trans & changed their name, so some old names have had to go away entirely. It’s been less than a year so new names are still emerging at a rapid pace, and many will probably not stick.

[exceptinsects]

I...wow, I had no idea this was such a Thing. In my family we just called them both Grandma and it was fine?
If talking to someone else about them we’d say Grandma Mary or Grandma Jeanne, which eventually got shortened to Grammary and Gramjeanne.

Hail fellow Jennifer (I go by Jenny myself), I so understand your feelings about having your OWN NAME.

[sara]

The women in my maternal line have become "Nana" when our grandchildren were born since...oh, a long while. At least five or six generations and quite possibly before that. That far back and we were speaking German, though, so we don't have as many of those stories.

So I think I would get territorial about it, when the time comes.

[sgac]

When I was a baby, I had a Dad. But at some point not too long after I learnt to talk, we went to visit his mother (Nana to me, Dear Mother to her children). On that visit (which must have been one of many visits, we didn't live far away) she was apparently issuing instructions to her son a lot - "Martin do this, Martin do that". Everyone thought it was cute when tiny me experimentally called him Martin. Encouraged by the reaction, I kept on doing so.

And that is why I had to carefully train myself to talk about "My dad" at school, and every year searched for a father's day card that didn't have 'dad' on it.

[astolat]

Oh, I think people care about the small meaningless thing because it becomes a stand-in for the big things: connection, love, respect. You don't need to care what a child calls you if every time it's said it clearly means "I love you." You only need to care if there's cause for doubt.

And that reddit thread, the father who cares about being "daddy" is clearly just saying "I want to be loved by and deeply important to my child" but he was gone before she was born and sees her twice a month, so he can't have what he wants without making a massive change to his life and hers that he might no longer have the power to make even if he had the willingness to make it. And that's a reasonable thing to be unhappy about even if it's your own fault. I'm sad when I have to clean up a spilled cup of tea even if I'm the one who knocked it over. Actually it's worse when it's your own fault. :P

The part that's not reasonable is when you yell at the cup of tea for falling over or try to blame someone on the other side of the table for not cleaning up the mess you made.

[malkingrey]

part of my attitude about names now has been formed by having a top three name for the year of my birth

Oh, lord. I got one of those, too. My freshman year in college, out of thirty girls on my corridor, five of us had the same name. At least I was the one who didn't also use the common nickname; I had declared to my parents at age 8 that my name was [full name], not [nickname], and God bless them, they heard me.

From the parent side, though -- you can't win. When the Elder Son was born, we picked a name for him that we hadn't heard anyone else using for their kid (patron saint of Himself's then-profession), only to have that name make a surprise move up the lists that same year.

At least my grandparents didn't go in for the name-drama: My paternal grandmother was "Memaw" and my maternal grandmother was "Mamamama." (In later life, I was amused to note that I had apparently discovered the principle of linguistic reduplication at an early age . . . word nuts, it seems, are born, not made.)

[jamethiel]

Both of my grandmothers were Grandma, but we had Grandma [Surname] and Grandma Cassidy. Grandma Cassidy was named after her cat, which luckily she found hilarious.

[ambersnake]

Hello from Finland! We really do enjoy pronouncing every single letter (and we do not mention French in polite company).