Words for grandparents: was: Pittsburgh Dialect

[Lynne Murphy]

>At 03:17 PM 10/18/00 -0400, Douglas Wilson wrote:
>
>>Another lexical item (I don't know how widespread, but I've heard it only
>>in Pittsburgh): commonly "pap" (rhymes with "cap") = "grandfather" (and
>>absolutely not "father"). This apparently is a contraction of "grandpap",
>>which is heard also (but less often). Much less frequently, I've heard
>>"gram" [I think that's what I heard] for "grandmother": thus "Gram and Pap"
>>= "Grandma and Grandpa". "Pap" is used in address: "Hi, Pap!" = "Hi,
>>Grandpa!" [Seems very odd to me: 'pap' ought to mean 'father'.]

Beverley Olson Flanigan wrote:

>         Do Pittsburghers also use "mamaw" and "papaw" for grandmother and
>grandfather?  These are common in SE Ohio (in all age groups), and I'm
>curious to know how far east/northeast they go.

I don't know about Pittsburgh, but I've known two families in western
NY who call one set of Grandparents "Nana" and "Pup-up" (no idea how
_they_ spell it!  I think it's the paternal g-parents in both cases).
The families are completely unrelated (and the citations are 20 years
apart).  I always (as a local) found these words strange.  Are they
imports from another area?  I'm sure 'nana' is common, but the fact
that both families consider 'nana' and 'pup-up' to be a matched set
in some way--that seems suspiciously precise.

(In our family, we had 2 grandmas and a papa.  If my other
grandfather were alive, he would've been 'grandpa'--there could be
only one Papa.)

Lynne

--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
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