The Grandma Name Game
Article by Kimberly Avery
"I'm going to be a grandmother," I proudly announced to my friends over lunch. I could hardly contain my excitement. No longer would I have to resort to showing screenshots of my granddogs when my friends bragged about their grandchildren. After the cheers and congratulations, a friend who was already a veteran grandmother asked, "Well, what's your name going to be?" "Name?" "What are your grandkids going to call you?" she asked. No one had ever prepared me for that question. I shook my shoulders and answered, "I guess Grandma." "Oh, that's no good," my friend frowned. It makes you seem old." "I think the fact that I am now old enough to have a child that is old enough to have a child makes me seem old," I quipped.
A few days later, I mentioned it to my sister-in-law, who agreed with my friend picking a name was a must. "In fact," she told me, "you need to pick it up soon." You don't want to be stuck with a name that is the only one left after all the family's other grandmas, and aunts choose theirs. Then as if suddenly remembering she warned, "In fact, I know a friend who ended up being NeeNaa because everything good was already taken." "NeeNaa the grandma" for the rest of my days? That prospect seemed absolutely terrifying.
Driving my younger son to practice, I decided to enlist a more youthful perspective. "What do you think might be a good name for my grandchildren to call me?" I asked. "Let's ask Google," he suggested. "Not to worry, Mom they have a list. Mi Mi, Gi Gi, De De, Minie, Honey, Queenie, Marmie, Kitty, Lolly. So it must end with E and sound like the name of candy or a stripper?" this was no help. "This site suggests you add mama in front of the first letter of your first name. So you would be Mama K," he laughed.
That sounds like a rapper, not a grandmother.' I told him, "I can hear it now. Mama K is in the house." So give it up for "Mama K and the grands." He laughed. Hard pass!" I told him disapprovingly.
"Kim Kardashian's kids call their grandma Lovey." he read. "I doubt I should take my grandma's name from the suggestion of a woman who broke the internet with her bottom." I snapped, "Hey, I didn't write It. I'm just reading it." He smiled. "Besides, Lovey reminds me of Gilligan's Island," I told him. Gillian's What? He asked, "Is that a grandma thing?"
A friend of mine had picked Ki Ki as her grandma's name. I wouldn't suggest it, she said. "The other day, my three-year-old granddaughter asked Ki Ki, are you, my grandma?" "Wow! So much pressure to pick a name. I contemplated "just remember everyone will be calling you that for the rest of your life." she warned
Remembering I wasn't exactly alone in this, I asked my husband. "Have you come up with your grandparent name yet?" "Sure he responded immediately, "Barry is taking Paw Paw, and I'm going with Grandpa." I was stunned. "This was the same man who took one month to settle on a good name for his truck and one week to pick a clever enough name for his fantasy football league, but this he had already picked?"
Weighing the gravity of this decision, I spent the next seven months contemplating the suitability of grandma's names. I conducted poles and asked the experts my mother's water aerobics class. It should be a name that describes me but doesn't define me. Something simple yet dignified. Original but not overused. I imagined a word I could live with being called until my dying day and possibly etched on my tombstone.
Finally, by the time my first grandchild, little Gerald, who goes by G, arrived, I had settled on the very simple, understated, and unoriginal name of "Grandma." I felt I had made the right decision. Grandma couldn't be rhymed with, made fun of, or misunderstood; also, I had waited so long to decide that everything else was taken. "I'm going to be called Grandma," I announced confidently to everyone I believed could help reinforce the name. Unfortunately, a year later, it became apparent I had made a grave miscalculation. Try as he may, little Gerald can't pronounce Grandma, so instead, I am now Bumpah for the rest of my days.
Edited by Rebekah Crozier