Home Is Where Mum Is

What do you call your mother? For as long as I can remember I've called mine mum. I don't know why exactly, but I still refer to her as mum. When my son was young he called me mum mum, sometimes muma, and then when he was a teenager, it was just mom. My girls called me mommy, but as they became teenagers, my oldest daughter thought it was a kick to call me mother. What started as a joke has stuck. We are now mother and father to our girls. On days they're trying to win us over, it gets reduced to motha or fatha. They even call each other sister (or sista) and, of course, their brother is brother or brotha. We do get odd looks every now and again. I'm sure some people think the girls are being sarcastic, or maybe a bit uppity, but I've gotten used to it. I still love it when they call me mommy by mistake.

Speaking of names, I never called any of my grandmothers grandma. I am the oldest grandchild on my mother's side of the family and after hearing my grandmother called by her given name Irene, the nickname Rena popped out and that's what all of the grandchildren that followed called her. Apparently there was a similar story on my dad's side of the family. My paternal grandmother's name was Dorothy and was also give a nickname. We all called her Mama Dot.

And on and on it goes. Some older family members are referred to by their middle name instead of their given name. I'm not quite sure why that is either, but since I became a grandmother, I've been thinking a lot about names. Six months after my granddaughter's birth, I still can't decide what I want her to call me. After all of the unique names dancing around, I guess we ran out of creativity, because my children refer to their two sets of grandparents as grandma and grandpa and we have to add their last names just so they know who we're talking about.

So... do you have any special names in your family? Care to weigh in on your choice for grandmother names?

And since I'm having a bit of an identity crisis, I thought it would be fun to include these links.

Are you in a state of well-being?

What period of history do you really belong in? (It was Elizabethan England for me.)

Do you call them cookies or biscuits?

This is worth repeating: Do you pronounce the word aunt ahnt or ant? Take this dialect quiz to find out what kind of accent you have.

And just for fun... Harry Potter fans, what's your patronus? (I am an otter.)