Words for grandparents

[Mark Odegard]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Beverly Flanigan" <flanigan at OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2000 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: Words for grandparents


> "Mor-mor" is indeed Swedish, and Norwegian, so it's not just
a made-up
> term.  The male term is "Far-far."  These are just
reduplications of the
> words for mother and father.  My mother and her siblings
used Mor and Far
> when they conversed in Norwegian, but switched to Ma and Pa
when talking in
> English.  (The /r/ is trilled, of course.)

Momor, morfar, farmor, and farfar are transparent even in
English. Swedish has four words four 'grandparent' while
English only has two. I don't know how otherwise 'Sudanese'
Swedish gets.

While there are lots of nicknames for 'grandparent', every
dialect of English meticulously keeps and maintains our
'Eskimo' system of family-words. Measured from 'ego', there
are only parents and parents removed by the word 'grand'; then
children, and those children removed by the word 'grand'. The
other unique words are those for mother, father, aunt, uncle,
nephew, neice and cousin, as well as son and daughter.
Compared to other languages, this is quite poor, though the
"Hawaiian system" is even poorer.

The one term English really does lack, one which only some
languages do have (e.g, Ukranian, so I am told), is that for
'in-law[s] of ego's child', 'person with whom ego shares a
grandchild'. This has only recently become a seriously
important relationship, in that the grandparent was usually
dead by the time the child became of age; nowadays, at least
two of them survive long enough, and undivorced enough to
happily attend the baptism of the mutual grandchild.

Mark.