The etymological form for grandfather doesn't come from the masculine gender but from the feminine. That is, 'grandfather' derives from 'grandmother', not from its natural Latin evolution, which would have been 'au' (in Latin, 'avus'). "The feminine form has marked the masculine form. And it wasn't done to avoid confusion with 'au' because we already have 'pájaro' as a common word," explains Carles Duarte, linguist and poet. According to this expert, "the deeper bond that develops with grandmother" may have helped. Eloi Bellés, professor of Catalan philology at the University of the Balearic Islands, adds that this casuistry also occurs with 'tío', which comes from 'tía' (from masculinizing the feminine form, a diminutive of 'tía'), since in Central Catalan the traditional form was tío. It's all a matter of language and ties.
From 'pradí' to 'güelis': the thousand and one ways to say 'grandfather' and 'grandmother'
Children create original, creative and fun names when they adapt their language to the sounds they hear, in a phenomenon in which the geographical origin of their grandparents also has an important weight.
BarcelonaGrandmother and grandfather: the mother or father of the mother or father... But also, you can call him godfather (colloquially, in Mallorca, pradine), and to her, nona (inspired by the Italian way of designating grandmother). In the Spanish version, we find the grandmother and the grandfather. Of originals, with ingenuity, we find arari (which derives from the phrase "now comes grandpa"), babimia (a compound formed by Josep Maria and grandfather), or others like Oh (grandmother messy) and Ava; apart from sweets iayuchi, mimi and güelis, and curious people like mamamama (that is, twice a mother).
Naming grandparents is an art form, and children are experts at it. Their imaginations run wild, and the esteem they feel for these ancestral figures completes their work. A love that plays with letters and syllables and results in new words. Carles Duarte, linguist and poet, highlights the emotional nature of these words: "It's evident that the figure of grandparents has a uniquely emotional connotation, of support, warmth, and accompaniment, which explains the formation of these hypocoristic words (that is, affectionate names formed by shortening and extending beyond those that go further). Emotionality." Duarte, director of the Knowledge and Culture Foundation (CIC), explains that words are almost never neutral. "They serve to describe reality, and all of them, even the apparently most abstract, have connotations. That's why we choose some and not others with an apparently identical meaning."
Mar Hurtado, president of the Rosa Sensat Teachers Association, remembers that her Andalusian cousin, with whom she is five years apart, called mamamama to his grandmother Conchi (who for Hurtado was Aunt Conchi). "During the Christmases and summers when we were together in Jaén, I used to reproach her for being wrong because she wasn't a mother. One day I understood. She wanted to make both generations visible. I found it very funny..." explains Hurtado, who values children's imagination. "It's that capacity of children to see the world through images. Nothing is done in just one way. There are a thousand and one ways to say... grandmother and all are valid." Francina Jaumandreu, mother of twin girls, adds that, in her case, since the two girls had trouble saying Maria Rosa (their grandmother's name), they themselves referred to it as Rirri. "Now everyone around them also says it to them," she says. ~BK_SLT_ura~
According to neuroscientist Rosa Casafont, "what children do is adapt their language to the sounds they perceive phonetically and make adjustments based on the customs that exist at home." Her husband, named José María, is the one who receives —in the role of grandfather— the name of babimia. The writer and journalist Màrius Serra states that "at the time of learning the language, when the child is not yet on the right path to grammatical correctness, sensational things come out. Perhaps he makes a mistake when saying it, but it's funny and that remains established within the family story."
As it is a repeated role in the family, the geographical origin of the grandparents helps (a lot) to distinguish whether they are paternal or maternal. Anna Xicoira comments that her children say dad to the paternal grandfather because he is Chilean (dad It is common in Chile to refer to grandfather). In fact, for Serra, the way in which grandfathers and grandmothers are designated exudes a certain denomination of origin: "For example, let's talk about godparents and godmothers also in the Ponent part; in the Valencian Community they are more grandparents and grandmas, and they say more slime in the Girona regions." Eloi Bellés, professor at the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), points out that godfather and godmother (pronounced pradine and pradina) are common in Mallorca, where the form "godfather" is used to distinguish them from the godfather. young godfather for this second figure; in Ibiza they are designated grandparents (which comes fromgrandparents, grandparents), and in Menorca it is common to say becomes a grandmother and the grandfather, with a salty article in one case and a literary one in the other; become a grandfather and becomes a grandmother.
Many grandparents also want to have their say and suggest their own name. That's what Grandma Nina has done. This isn't her real name, but she's always wanted to be called that. Being called "grandmother" doesn't bother her either, although the word makes some people uncomfortable because it makes them feel older. None of the names children create, however, tend to sound ridiculous or generate rejection. On the contrary. As Serra points out, "unlike the names adults call each other in emotional relationships, such as dear either churri, children have the ability to deactivate this characteristic by ridiculing it with the names they express."
