<p>How do you address your grandparents? As future/current grandparents, how would you like to be addressed?</p>
<p>I was speaking with a woman the other day and she said “my H and I finally selected the names we want our grandkids to call us” The are opting for Cozy and Cappy! (I must admit I was expecting her to say Nana or Papa or something more main stream like Grandma Jones)</p>
<p>We always went for the traditional Grandma & Grandpa Jones & G & G Smith.</p>
<p>Please don’t tell me there is proper etiquette for this process…like the mother of the bride gets first choice!</p>
<p>We did Nanny/Pop Pop for my parents and Grandma and Grandpa for the paternal grandparents. My son, who is now almost 13, called my mom “Nanny Noo Noo” which evolved to Noo Noo. The girls call her “Nan.”</p>
<p>I had friend who was instructed by her mother-in-law, on her wedding day, that she would continue to call her Mrs. Smith. When her first child was born, her mother-in-law told her that she wished to be called Grandmother by her grandchildren, but my friend was to continue to address her as Mrs. Smith. My friend informed her that her children would refer to their grandmother as Mrs. Smith, just as she did! Having had the displeasure to spend time with this women on several occasions, I would have loved to see the look on her face when that conversation happened. And my friend’s children did indeed call their grandmother Mrs. Smith, just like their mother did.</p>
<p>I called my MIL Mrs. Jones until her death after more than 20 years of marriage. My kids never called her anything because they had as little interest in her as she did in them.</p>
<p>My parents are Grammy & Poppy. My in-aws are Gramma first name and Poppa first name. My son was the last grandchild for both sets and the names were picked well before he was even a figment of our imagination. </p>
<p>I called my grandparents Nana & Poppy and my other grandmother was Nanny (grandfather died 25 yrs before I was born.) </p>
<p>I have a friend who called her mil Mrs. White. I thought it bizarre but apparently she isn’t the only one. I call my in-laws mom & dad.</p>
<p>My father-in-law was called “Papa [firstname]” by the grandchildren he already had before my kids were born. Not only did this become the name by which my children addressed him, my own father, who had no pre-existing grandchildren, was somewhat forced into becoming “Papa [fortunately different firstname]” as well.</p>
<p>One side, Grandma and Grandpa, the other side Granddaddy and Granny (My parents and in-laws.) If I make it to that point, they can call me whatever they like.</p>
<p>My father wanted my kids to call them Meme (pronounced Mem-ay) and Pepe (pronounced Pep-ay). [His family were French Canadian and that is what he called his grandparents.] He would sign cards that way. The oldest looked at a card and asked, “Why does Grandpa want to be called Pee-Pee?”</p>
<p>My nephew had grandparents who lived in SoCal in a townhouse complex called ‘The Fountains.’ His other grandparents lived in Montana. So they became “Grandpa/ma Fountains” and “Grandpa/ma Mountains.”</p>
<p>My FIL did NOT want to be called “Grandpa” or anything that suggested that he was a grandparent (he was a jerk). My MIL loves being called “Grandma” so when kids addressed them as “Grandma and Joe” it always sounded like my MIL had a new husband (heck, we wished she did…lol…but that’s another story.).</p>
<p>However, since my kids never lived near them, they never learned to NOT call FIL, “grandpa” …so they did when they would see him. My H never corrected them because H felt that his dad’s “issue” with being a grandfather was silly since he was WELL old enough (FIL tried to correct our kids a few times). In the end, the younger grandkids would hear our kids call him “Grandpa” and they started calling him that, too. FIL gave up. LOL (My MIL was relieved when he gave up the fight. She didn’t like the “Grandma and Joe” issue, either.)</p>
<p>I would like to be called, “nanna”…but I’ll take whatever…I’d love to be a grandma!</p>
<p>My kids call each grandmother “Grandma First name”. They call my FIL “Paw Paw”. None of them ever said they had a preference. My Dad passed away when I was a child. My brother’s D is older than my kids. She started the “grandma firstname” and we followed suit. DH always called his grandfather Paw Paw so began referring to his Dad that way as soon as S1 was born.</p>
<p>My cousins and I (who lived in the same town as her) called our grandmother “Grandmama”. My cousins who lived out of state called her “Grand Honey”. Her name was Thelma… not Honey. Not sure how they came up w/ that.</p>
<p>Our kids call their paternal grandparents: Grammy & Pop-Pop</p>
<p>My husband and his siblings called their paternal grandparents: Mama Mia and Grandpa</p>
<p>My husband and his siblings called their maternal grandparents: Nana and Lolli
They called their grandfather Lolli because every time he would come out to visit he would bring lollipops.</p>
<p>We have Nana and Poppy (traditional names in my mother’s family), Gram and Opah and Omah for my in-laws (stepmother-in-law is German). I had Nana on one side (the relevant Poppy having died many years before) and Grandma and Grampa on the other. I am sure my wife will want to be called Gram like her mother; I have yet to think or care what I will want. My children are still in the avoiding-pregnancy mode, and will be for several years, although I can imagine the day when that changes.</p>
<p>Shortly before my wedding, my mother (whose name is Susan) announced that she wanted to be called “Suzu” by my wife and her future grandchildren. (The mother of one of her high-society friends had been called “Goggie” by one and all, and my mother was trying to emulate that.) That never took. My wife didn’t go along with it, and kept calling my mother by her first name. My father thought it was hilarious and wrote a funny song about it. Most people asked why she wanted to be named after a Japanese car. She had briefly sounded my wife out on calling her Mom, but that did not appeal to my wife at all, either.</p>
<p>I met my future in-laws only once before their daughter and I were a fairly permanent thing, and I was (as the song says) “way past 21” (like, a year or two), so once I actually had to have a relationship with them it was on a first-name basis. It helped that my future sister-in-law’s husband was in his mid-30s, so my in-laws had gotten over being called Mom and Dad.</p>
<p>3 of my 4 grandparents had passed away before I was born, so I had one Grandma.</p>
<p>My mother said she didn’t care what my kids called her so long as it wasn’t “Granny.” My parents ended up as Grandma and Grandpa. </p>
<p>I’d have been happy with Grandma (first name) and Grandpa (first name) on both sides, but H’s family had cultural names they wanted carried on. Thus his mother is now TheThe to the grandkids (pronounced theh - theh, it’s Arabic she is half-Syrian) and his dad is PopPop. When my daughter was 4, I accompanied H on a business trip and TheThe stayed with the kids. D had a bad croup attack and ended up in the emergency room. After her x-ray she began to cry, “Where is my Thethe? I want my Thethe!” The poor nurses had no idea what a Thethe was… they were looking under the table and in the corner, thinking it was a stuffed animal or blanket. When my MIL came back into the room they said, “Where’s her Thethe?” she laughed, “Oh that’s me!”</p>
<p>My SIL’s parents did not want to be grandma or grandpa and invented some ridiculous names that I won’t print here for fear they’ll be recognized. Suffice it to say they sound like clowns or Nick Jr. characters. </p>
<p>D’s BF’s grandfather was a doctor. When the oldest grandchild was a baby, he couldn’t say Grandpa so he called him DocDoc. And that’s what they all still call him. </p>
<p>My cousin’s oldest D couldn’t say grandma so she called her grandmother “MeeMo.” We thought it was adorable and they should stick with it, but eventually MeeMo evolved into Grandma, and then into Gram.</p>
<p>As for what to call the inlaws, since the wedding H and I have called each other’s parents by their first names. Of course H is named after his father so it gets confusing… half the time I end up calling my FIL PopPop.</p>