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Call me anything, just call me...

  
  

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Ex
16:57 / 05.07.04
What do you call your family? Aside from the adjectives and the insults.
I call the parents "Mother" and "Father". People have pointed out that this is a chilling subconscious sign of my emotional detachment - but actually it's a chilling sign that I was a pretentious gloomy teenage twat who started doing it deliberately. Now it's stuck.
My favourite aunt is "Aunt"; the others aren't really called anything as my sense of the ridiculous kicks in when calling someone "Uncle Graham", but I am still too cowed by their seniority to throw their first names round.

I bring this up because I am still in awe of people who call their parents by their first names - it still seems rather daring, and also acknowledges that they're people with lives and names and everything. I think if that had been pointed out to me at the age when I learned to say "Mummy" my tiny head would have exploded. Or possibly I would have become a Better Person.

Fuckpuppets also - partner? Spice? Girlf?
Anything idiosyncratic and postmodern welcome.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
17:06 / 05.07.04
I call my family by their names. With occasional lapses into "Mum", "Dad" or "Arsehole" (a term of great affection in the Mink household) when emotion gets the better of me.

The younger children of my middle brother refer to me by my title - Supreme High Unclissimo. I have borrowed heavily from Spider Jerusalem in establishing my cool with them.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
20:08 / 05.07.04
I was also a pretentious gloomy teenage twat, and really really tried to make the 'Mater' and 'Pater' thing work. Never happened, sadly -I ended up calling my father by his real name because we worked in the same office for a bit, and my mother I probably called, umn, 'Mopster' more than anything else. I think it was from a joke that one of my friends made, which was doubtless hilarious at the time but has since been lost in the mists.

I actually call my favourite auntie 'favourite auntie', which means I have to watch myself at family gatherings when other aunts might be present...
 
 
Olulabelle
20:20 / 05.07.04
Sadly I still say 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' which has my kiwi cousins in fits of laughter on a regular basis. My 6 year old son also calls me 'Mummy' which I like and I can't ever imagine being just 'Mum'.

He has 4 sets of Grandparents, and so he calls them the following names, all his own creation: Grandma Bob and Grandad Bob; Grandma Jelly and Grandad Jelly; Grandma Mac; Grandma Sue and for my dad; Grandad-with-the-sore-arm-and-the-sore-head-that-died. And whilst the last one is a bit of a mouthful, at least we are always sure which Grandparent he is referring to.

He also calls my sister 'Mad Aunt Becky'. Which she is oddly rather taken with.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
08:32 / 06.07.04
Sadly not 'Mater' and 'Pater', but I do occasionally use 'Mama' and 'Papa'. Only occasionally though - usually it's just 'Mum' and 'Dad' (or 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' if wheedling). My parents used to call their parents 'Mama', 'Papa', 'Ma' and 'Pa', which I think must be where it comes from. All other relatives are addressed by their first names, except Grandpa.
 
 
illmatic
09:12 / 06.07.04
"Mum" for my Mum with occasional use of "you mad old bat" and "Dad" for my Dad when he was still around.

Isn't calling your parents by their first names regarded as a hideous sin by CS Lewis, in one of the Narnia books? I think it's Eustace Scrubb who does it, in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and it's regarded as a indicator of his family's socialism, vegetarianism and general degeneracy. Homosexuality, drug use and an early death await surely.

I do recall a mate of mine in his teens who still called his mum "mummy". he obviously felt a bit uncomfortable with it, 'cos the whole intonation of his voice used to change, as if he was trying to make it sound like he was saying something else.
 
 
Grey Area
09:26 / 06.07.04
I refer to my parents as Mama and Papa. I think this reflects my teutonic upbringing...and the fact that my parents didn't want me to use the other option,namely Mutti and Vati. Mutter/Vater is just way too formal.
 
 
Axolotl
09:49 / 06.07.04
Mum and Dad, alternating with "old woman" and "old man", which when I think about it probably isn't that nice. I have considered calling them by their first names (as apparently I used to in my pre-school years) but it just seems wrong, and some how contrived. My sister still calls them "mummy" and "daddy" which I find quite creepy in people who are no longer children (she's twenty).
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:13 / 06.07.04
I call my mum "Mum". I'm still not sure why I used to call one grandmother "Grandma" and the other "Nan", but I did.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:25 / 06.07.04
I bring this up because I am still in awe of people who call their parents by their first names - it still seems rather daring, and also acknowledges that they're people with lives and names and everything.

Ooh, me too. It seesm terribly cool and boho.

Er, to their faces: mummy(when she was still around) and daddy or Ma/Baba(mother tongue). They insisted on it.

During The Great Daughter Child Revolution of '84 I tried to popularise mum and dad and it went down like a lead balloon. Too familiar/disrespectful/pleb-English I suspect.

When talking about them: mum/dad. Probably to save my blushes. Except with sister. My brother-in-law still cackles whenever one of us refers to 'Daddy'. To him I think it sounds incredibly posh/precious.

I think this has to do with caste/locale, talking to my s-mums family(Maharastrian), they find our Bengali formality really funny/pretentious.

Aunts/Uncles: a zillion different things. Always use bengali(or maharastrian)names, and it's a complex system, with different names for 'father's older brother'/Jethu, 'father's younger sister'(Mashi) etc... And *then* there are modifiers for 'first uncle'/'second uncle's wife' etc

Older cousins: didi/dada (older brother/sister)
Younger: various diminuitive pet names...

well, you did ask.
 
 
Nobody's girl
14:55 / 06.07.04
My flatmate calls his mother "Human Female".
 
 
_Boboss
15:06 / 06.07.04
my sister's due 25/12/04 which is going to make christmas pretty weird from now on, two family birthdays plus babyjesus'.

so there i'll be in turkey-sleep and whiskey-grin, i shall smile and point down at the crib and say to hir:

bob's yer uncle

and go back to the telly! woo! i love christmas.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:36 / 06.07.04
At which, hopefully, ze will show the good sense to wee all over you.

Ugh.
 
 
Saveloy
15:51 / 06.07.04
Boring old Mum and Dad (if he was still about) for me. They were the best for huffing and moaning with: "ohhhhh, muuuuuuuum, why can't I?" 'Mummyyyyyyyy' is too whiney.

"I bring this up because I am still in awe of people who call their parents by their first names - it still seems rather daring, and also acknowledges that they're people with lives and names and everything."

Bah, to me it sounds formal and pretentious, unless the person in question is addressing a step parent, or a blood relation that they want to distance themselves from (in which case fair enough). I'm not sure it acknowledges that they are a person with a name etc so much as it denies - or throws a tarpaulin over - all the weird, difficult to define stuff that comes with a parent/child relationship, all the stuff you don't get with friends, acquaintances etc.
 
 
electricinca
20:21 / 06.07.04
My mother I call 'Mum' but my father I generally call 'Old Man' or by his name, occasionally I'll call him 'Dad'.

Having step-family members increases the confusion of names we use for other family members no end. My siblings (blood and step via my stepdad) and I call my mum and stepdad 'The Olds' when discussing them in third person and we all call my stepdad 'Big Guy'.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
08:23 / 07.07.04
Isn't calling your parents by their first names regarded as a hideous sin by CS Lewis, in one of the Narnia books? I think it's Eustace Scrubb who does it

It was indeed, although I always thought it was a wonderful way of making him hated by the 6-12 age range... for me it summed up the kid at primary school who's a bit cooler that you, but thinks he's a lot cooler than you, and is only cooler than you at all because his parents are way more advanced than your parents.

(For 'you', by the way, read 'me'. Much of the pain of my early school days was alleviated by mental comparison of my wee pals to Eustace Scrubb)
 
 
Unencumbered
09:39 / 07.07.04
My father is always 'Dad' but my mother's called all manner of things from 'Mum' through to affectionate insults like 'dotty old crone' and 'fruit bat', and occasionally (because she has cancer and walks on crutches) 'my poor, crippled mother who has been struck down in her prime'.

She usually refers to me as 'number one son', 'fatso' (I'm very skinny), 'fruit of my loins' or 'produce of my lust'.

What can I say - I come from a very strange family.
 
 
Sekhmet
12:27 / 07.07.04
I call my mother "Marmee", which I guess I got from Little Women or something and my friends all think it's odd. Dad is Dad. My step-parents are called by their first names, as are my in-laws.

All other relations are "Grandmother X", "Aunt X", "Uncle X", "Great-Grandmother X" etc. They're like military titles. No Grannies or Aunties in my family. Except my dad's dad's mom, who for some reason we all called Gran-Gran. I think one of my older cousins came up with that when he was small and it stuck.

My mother wants her grandchildren to call her "Oma" and my dad would like to be known as "Your Majesty". So my kids, when I have 'em, are gonna have a fun time.
 
 
lonely as a cloud...
13:04 / 07.07.04
I call my father by his first name, or some bastardisation of same, depending on how whimsical I'm feeling. My mother is either mumsy (when whimsical) or Pinky, a tag she acquired when she used to wear a hideous fluorescent pink corduroy track-suit-y kind of get-up.
If I ever become a parent, I think I'd like to be refered to as "The Deceased"....
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
16:05 / 07.07.04
"Parental Units" is usually what I use. Or "Mom" and "Dad". When I’m not talking to their faces it's generally "The Bitch" and "Dad". Not always, though. Cousins are simply referred to by their names, with the exception of Tory (who is 25 hours younger than me to the minute) whom I simply refer to as my twin sister. My biological sister- who is a good six inches shorter than I, has many names, "Shortpants", "the midget", "Napoleon (the tiny tyrant)", "Shorty", and "Kiri" which she prefers to her real name, Kirsten ( so I call her Kirsten as much as possible). Grandparents are as follows: Gramma and Grampa, Nanna and Grampa John. Aunts and Uncles are referred to as "Aunt X" or "Uncle X".
As to the other question, my significant other is either named, or referred to as "Sweetie" generally, with an occasional "darling" or "luv" thrown in for good measure. When she gets bossy I always switch to "Ma'am" which annoys her, so I give a kiss and that fixes it.
 
 
Cat Chant
16:31 / 07.07.04
A close friend of mine recently explained his relationship with me by saying "A. is my biological sister, but Deva is my soul sister". This is only interesting/funny if you know that in fact A. is no relation to him at all, but since I did know that, I thought it was pretty charming, not least because "biological sister" was being used as a metaphor for a chosen relationship rather than as anchoring a relationship in nature.

I am not in contact with any members of my extended family at all - I have no idea how many cousins I have, for example, or where any of my aunts and/or uncles live, or indeed any of my aunts' married surnames (if they are married, which they may or may not be). I have no step- or half-relatives, and have only met my sister's husband's family once, very briefly, at their wedding. So my familial nomenclature is pretty simple: Mum, Dad (occasionally "Mume and Dade" for tedious family-joke-type reasons), and first names of full siblings. And I call my girlfriend my girlfriend... or at least I'd like to. I usually end up saying "partner" to anyone I don't know well or who I feel is senior to me in some way, because it sounds more grown-up and like the sort of person who has, like, an authorized place in one's life, rather than the frolicking little butterfly of passion and joy she in fact is. ("Can I bring my partner to the conference dinner?" vs "Can I bring my girlfriend...?")

The terminology that gets interesting for me is the friendship stuff, I suppose. I wrote a few different versions trying to explain the relationship between me & the boy in the first para of this post before settling on "close friend" (maybe I should call him my "soul brother"), and I never know what to call the woman with whom I had a romantic friendship for fifteen years before she stopped speaking to me, when I got together with my girlfriend, two years after deciding with the romantic-friend that we shouldn't sleep together. (I've provisionally settled on "ex best friend", which you can punctuate as "ex/best friend" or "ex-best-friend".)

I'd be interested to know about the friendship/relationship terms used by polyamorous posters, or people who consider their passionate friendships to be of equal intensity and importance with their sexual relationships (see the 'bisexual' thread in the Head Shop)...
 
 
Mourne Kransky
16:37 / 07.07.04
I used to be chastised severely for calling my dad "Faither", which would have been the usual Scots word round my way, so now he's usually "Dad", "Auld Yin" or called by his first name. Since my Grandad died many years back, I've noticed we've transferred "Pop" to him, which is the honorific in our house for the Alpha Male at any gathering.

Call my Mum "Mum", "Auld Yin" or, sometimes, "Mother" but then, me being a big girly poof and all, there are other people in my life who go by the name of "Mother". Neither of them is a relative and one of them is male.

I have lots of nicknames for my youngest sister, who is very dear to me, mostly abusive, and we two refer to the middle sister, amongst ourselves, as "(European Community) Beef Mountain", which is damned unfair because we're both fatter than her - but fun though.

Too many people with the same first names in my family, so we use a lot of nicknames.
 
 
lekvar
06:38 / 08.07.04
Isn't calling your parents by their first names regarded as a hideous sin by CS Lewis, in one of the Narnia books? I think it's Eustace Scrubb who does it, in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and it's regarded as a indicator of his family's socialism, vegetarianism and general degeneracy. Homosexuality, drug use and an early death await surely.

Four out of six so far... Yes, I was one of those kids, but that's how I was brought up. The grandparent's weren't having any of that so they are "grandma X" and "grandpa X".

The fun part come when it's time to decide what your kids'll call you. I wanted my daughter to call me by my first name but I was informed that I'll be refered to as "Pappy" (Say it with a 1930's Popeye accent).
 
 
jblank: the fucking slidechamp
22:27 / 09.07.04
i call my mother "Mom", my dad by his first name or sometimes "Pop" if i'm feeling nice. my aunts i call by their first names, execpt one who i still call "Aunt (blank)". and i still call my grndmother "Nana" after 31 years. everybody else i'm on a first name basis with, except a few elderly cousins.
 
 
Brigade du jour
13:52 / 23.07.04
I call my mum "Mum" and my dad "Dad", but where it gets slightly more interesting is with my grandparents.

My paternal grandmother was "Nan" or when I was younger "Nanny" and my paternal grnadfather "Grandad" (maybe it's supposed to be "Granddad" but in spite of my usual fastidiousness about spelling I didn't seem to care!).

My maternal grandmother, however, was "Nanny Barry" which I thought some of you may find amusing, what with it being a boy's name and everything! But Barry is my mum's maiden name, which still doesn't make it all right. Damn.

Oh, and my mum's dad I never knew so never called him anything. But I've heard loads about him and tend to think of him as simply "Mike". He was a semi-drunken Irish poet and I fully intend to one day live up to his fine example!
 
 
RadJose
14:48 / 23.07.04
for my mother i usually call her by her first name or "mom". when i talk about her it's either "mom" or "ma". my father is always "pop" after in high school i decided that it should be.

all my aunts and uncles that were in my family before i was about 14yrs old are refered to as "aunt X" and "uncle X", all that married in after that are only referred to as thier first names. i do have one aunt i call "aunt Stewmeat". and it is to be noted that i say it "ant" and not "ont".

my mother parents are always "grandma and grandpa Christian (lastname)" but my father parents were "grandpa Willi & grandma Helen (firstnames)" i don't know why this was. also w/ all my great-grandparents it the title of great-grandpa or grandma with the lastname. except for one of my great grandfathers, he was called "Grandpa Daddy" because he was daddy's grandpa. (i aparently came up w/ this when i was a little one and everyone thought it was too cute to die, particularly Grandpa Daddy).

most all my cousins are on a first name basis, save for the few of us that are very close that like to call eachother "cousin X" for the fuck of it when we see each other. we also seem to get all our friends to do that too. anyone i know runs into my cousin Sean says "hey i saw Cousin Sean last night, he says hi".

all friends of mine get crazy nicknames (Noodle, Atomic, Tricky Pants) or odd titles (the Master of the Black Flame, the Brandon). it just happens, i don't try for it or anything. i don't often call a friend by thier last name but it's been know to happen. some friends don't so much get nicknames as much as i like to call them by thier full name if i know it. something about seeing a friend across the room and yelling "hey Tyson Troy Markley! what up? we're sittin over here!". girlfriends get nicknames that they usually think are silly but i asume the grow to love. in the past i've dated a Peachcakes and a Lil' Maple Leaf.
 
 
unheimlich manoeuvre
19:26 / 23.07.04
my parents will always be mam and dad. never could bring myself to refer to them by their first names.
my forenames are james robert and my older brother's name is john so he was john-boy and i was jim-bob with a nod to the waltons.
my brother has referred to our parents as mater/pater or matriarch/patriarch (with a touch of cynicism) for as long as i can remember.
 
 
Ganesh
21:15 / 23.07.04
'Mum'. My Dad's dead, so I don't call him anything.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
01:27 / 24.07.04
That's a bit harsh. And you never call your mother.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:59 / 25.07.04
Every time I look at the photos of the old garden patio, as the house boy brings me my golden hour cocktail, out here in the Congo, I think of them fondly as " Mummsy " and " That Guy. "
 
 
Ganesh
18:13 / 25.07.04
That's a bit harsh. And you never call your mother.

And, in pointing this out, you map eerily onto the role of guilt-tripping maternal superego. They do say men marry their mothers...
 
 
Billuccho!
19:42 / 25.07.04
It's generally 'Ma' and 'Pop,' for me.

I have a friend who calls his dad 'Boss' and his mom 'Flo,' though. Aheh.
 
 
William Sack
21:26 / 25.07.04
I have 6 month old identical twin sons. When talking about them I refer to them by name or as "the boys", "my boys", or "the/my children." I haven't refered to them as "the twins" but when others have it has grated slightly. I guess I'm aware that being twins, and especially identical ones, that there will be an understandable tendency for people to lump them together as a unit, and "the twins" sort of reinforces it.
 
 
Cat Chant
08:37 / 26.07.04
My parents have just moved in (temporarily) with my sister, brother-in-law, and tiny nephew, so I now have to decide whether to address emails/postcards to "Mum*, Dad*, Denise*, Fernando* and tiny Moon Buggy*" or "Anastasia, Hector, Denise, Fernando and tiny Moon Buggy", because "Mum, Dad, [Christian name], [Christian name] and [Christian name]" suddenly sounds sort of funny. (The only times I ever refer to my parents by their forenames is when I'm talking about them to my gf, who obviously calls them by their forenames, and it feels more natural to mimic her patterns rather than suddenly switch the terms.)

*not their real names
 
 
Jack Vincennes
09:28 / 26.07.04
I'd go with addressing everything to Anastasia, Hector, Denise, Fernando and tiny Moon Buggy, no matter what their real names are. Tiny Moon Buggy. Superb.
 
  

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