Words for grandparents: was: Pittsburgh Dialect

[Beverly Flanigan]

That "Pup-up" is usually spelled "Pop Pop" here, and my in-laws in
Baltimore used it too.  "Nana" is cited by a lot of my students, along with
"Gram" (not Granny, which they say sound old-fashioned).  I suspect Gram
and Nana are new-fangled forms, implying (at least for some of my students)
cool, less "old sounding" terms for their hip young grandmothers.  How far
back does Nana go?

At 08:49 AM 10/19/00 +0100, you wrote:
>>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
>fax:    +44(0)1273-671320


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm