It's crazy how many people in this thread either didn't understand how endearing these pet names are or think a nickname for a family member = uneducated or some such nonsense.
My nephew called me ពូSam (pou, uncle) and I loved it. My BiL is Cambodian, I'm not. ពូ means nothing to me but when my little buddy said it it meant everything. He got a little older and one day I went to their house and he just called me "Sam" and a little bit of me broke, NGL.
I never understood this, as my grandparents were always grandma/grandpa, or granny (in my paternal granmothers case she preferred it).
Then I moved to the south, and met my husband's family and friends. Every single one of them had weird names for at least one of their grandparents. A lot of them called grandmother "meemaw" and my father in law is papaw to my neices and nephews.
I took it as a cultural thing, but it still feels a bit strange to me.
I fucking hate meemaw/mamaw and papaw with a passion. Partly because me ex's white-trash family uses them, but also they just sound stupid and I hate saying/hearing them
I get that your anger probably comes from the frustration of a bad relationship. I also want to encourage you not to use bigoted terms. Just refering to them as your ex's family, or ex's fucked up family would have gotten a similar message across.
It really undermines your point, draws focus away from what youre trying communicate, & makes you look like a biased and unreliable narrator.
I hope that ex is out of your life & you're in a happier place now.
It's definitely a cultural thing because I had the same experience. Although, It think it's become more common to use different names for grandparents up north in recent years. My mom and dad, who have lived in Wisconsin their entire lives, are "Nana" and "Papa". Growing up I don't remember hearing anyone call their grandparents that.
It's wild down here. Thanks to a convoluted family tree due to adoption, divorce, and remarriage I had a total of 11 grandparents. Most of the men were Pawpaw <first name> to distinguish them except one who refused to be called anything except Grandfather and another we called pappy. Every one of the women had a different name loosely based on a mispronunciation of Granny.
It was always gran for my English grandma and grandma for the American one in my house. "Grandpa" to the faces of both, but their names if they weren't around. But it was always grandma or gran no matter if they were around or not
My grandpa's life partner came into his life after my dad was an adult but before I was born, so she's been in the family longer than I have. She never wanted to be called anything other than her first name, but by all measures, she is my grandma, and I love her. So I've had the typical grandma/grandpa names for mine, but I also have an Izzy, and that's really special to me.
Ha! This happened with my mother-in-law! She wanted to be called grandma, but when my daughter was a baby and first learning to talk, she pointed to my wife and said, "Mama!" and then she pointed to my mother-in-law and said, "Momo!" She's been Momo ever since.
"Ha! This happened with my(1) mother-in-law(2)! She(2) wanted to be called grandma, but when my(1) daughter(3) was a baby and first learning to talk, she(3) pointed to my wife(4) and said, "Mama!" and then she(3) pointed to my mother-in-law(2) and said, "Momo!" She's(2) been Momo ever since."
I interpret characters 2 and 4 as women, 1 as a man (assuming this because there is no mention of adoption), and 3 as a female child.
So not counting the baby, 2 women, unless (1) is a woman.
"This is my pee pee and my poo poo! The guy's 95 years old, he fought in WWII, stormed the beach at Normandy, now his name is Peepee?? What are you doing to the man?"
In my part of Appalachia, all grandpas in the family are "pap" which was very funny when my grandma married a man from England. He refused to let us call him that. For reasons.
I should apologize, actually. As a young, young kid, my parents didn't explain it to me for a long time. As a teenager, they explained it was in reference to a "pap smear" which is a gynecological thing. But it's weird, you asking made me search it up. I'm not finding anything specific to England.
I think you just accidentally changed a story I've been telling myself for my entire life.
We rescued a kitten about a month ago, immediately named him Pipo (or Peepo, same thing). I have never seen a cat wear his name so well. I heard Pipo is a famous character in italian children's jokes
My paternal grandmother was the opposite of this - apparently she really wanted a grandparent nickname and didn't care what it was. So there's, IDK, 2 year old me running around and I saw she was wearing big old sunglasses, and I said, "Cool Dude!" And it stuck.
Babies don't have it better tho. My name is Ian (Don't ask what my german mother living in germany thought), and some random ass neighbour of the allotment gardens of my aunt mispronounced it as "Ui/Ue". So that's my name for my aunt and sometimes mother now.
My great grandfather was bestowed with this. My father, when asked to say papa (this was when he was months old) responded with "Gug" so he started to be called Gug. This gentleman had a habit of calling everybody 'buster'. He did this with my older sister when she was like 4-5. So she called him "Buster Gug" and from that day on, that became his name to the entire family. I actually don't even know what his real name was. He died when I was young but he had a name given to him from 2 different generations.