Naming Grandmother

I'm obsessed with finding a grandmother name. It needs to be perfect, which is why my daughter (the baby's mother) was 6 weeks old before her older sister came home with the name Katherine from pre-school. It was the name of a classmate's new baby sister. The name on Katherine's birth certificate read "Baby Girl Robinson" until she was 10, when a trip from Vermont to Long Island was required to change it.


Katherine was adamant about me - or anyone else - not knowing the names she and Ty had chosen for Baby Tripp. When Juan the Gardener and I visited at Thanksgiving, The Big Book of 60,000 Baby Names lay on the coffee table. I picked it up and it fell open to a page marked by a small white piece of paper. Despite my determined resolve to say nothing, my mouth fell open when I noticed the name of a well-known Southern writer printed in Katherine's neat script.


"Oh, my God," I blurted, before I could stop, "You're not thinking of naming the baby ---? I mean, I doubt the baby will pen another -----."  I named a literary classic featuring a feathered creature in the title. That's all I can say.


"And that," said my daughter, clanging pans, "Is exactly why we're not telling anyone."


Juan had to walk me around the block a few times while he suggested that I not mention one more word about names.


"Use discriminating awareness," he urged. "You can do it."


Even while Katherine lay post c-section in recovery, babbling happily through exultant tears about seeing the color blue in the operating room, she wouldn't give so much as a hint of a name until Ty was present. I love that.


Back to grandmother names. There's "Granny," which I kind of like. It's just sort of how I feel, and it's light-hearted. My mother, the baby's great-grandmother is known to grandchildren and greats alike as "Gogs," short for "grand old gal." But, that's her name. My grandmother wanted to be called "Grandmere," but the best we could manage, not being French, was "Grumma."  On my father's side, our grandmother was known as "Nan" short for Nancy, or "Nin-Nin," which is what I called her.


Katherine likes "Mormor," the Swedish equivalent, but I don't, particularly as it sounds too much like More! More! which is a failing I wrestle with most days. More peanut M&Ms, more Tate's Oatmeal Raisin cookies, etc. There's "Oma," which is German and which, quite frankly, leaves me cold.


Juan is known as "Yeh Yeh" to his grandchildren, so I went with the feminine version, "Ya Ya." Positive and playful. Perfect, I thought. "Ya Ya."


"I'm Ya Ya," my sister Helen stated, when I tried it out on her and my mother at lunch one day. Even though I was a mite disappointed, she got to be grandmother first, so the only mature action was to defer.


Some other thoughts, returning to Francophilia, have included "Beauma" and "Bellemere."


"Goodnight, Grandma," Ty said, when I left after dinner the other night. 


"Hm," I replied, banging myself with the screen door, "Not bad. Grandma," I repeated.


"Kind of traditional," Katherine commented.


After some serious reflection, I decided "Grandma" sounded like a grey-bun-and-support-hose type of grandmother. I'm more the jeans, tee shirt and Tory Burch flip-flops type.


Next, I looked up grandmother names on-line. There was even a test to match one's personality to a corresponding name. The ensuing results described me as "intellectual" and "literary," the sort of grandmother likely to take my grandson on a museum outing, and to read him The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Hobbit. I was also depicted as "natural." Tripp and I shall splash in puddles and hike Vermont's Long Trail. The name this test produced, however, was an insult: "Me Maw." Me Maw? Like Hee Haw or Gee Gaw? No, thanks.


Then I came up with "Lela," pronounced "Layla," after the Spanish word for grandmother: Abuela. I know a little Spanish, and I spend time in Mexico. Both Juan the Gardener and Katherine liked it, but Jane didn't. 


"What? You're hanging out on the corner in Spanish Harlem?" she snorted. (She doesn't get out much.) "Besides," she continued, "Did you ever hear a baby burbling "lalala"? They can't. Find something else."


Names can be difficult.


"It was a pleasure to meet you, Tree," my mother said sweetly after her visit to the hospital to meet her great-grandson.


"Actually, it's Tripp," corrected my daughter.


"Of course. Goodbye, Trey," said my mother.


Back to the original dilemma: I still have a fondness for "Lela," but, c'est moi?