Words for grandparents: was: Pittsburgh Dialect

[Alice Faber]

Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>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?

I grew up in the 50s in a NY suburb. In my immediate family, we
distinguished between the two grandmothers as "Grandma Faber" and
"Grandma Greenberg". One set of cousins, however, referred to Grandma
Faber as "Nana"; I don't recall what they called their other
grandmother, though, even though I should (this other grandmother is
the one who taught me to knit and crochet, with European
yarn-handling techniques).

Alice
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Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
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