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cptsdcarlosdevil:

there are no good choices

if no one comes up with something better I’m going with “zaza”, on the grounds that all nonbinary words include z’s or x’s

 

towardsagentlerworld:

Can they just call you Ozy?

(I may teach my child to call me by my first name, because (1) that’s what everyone else calls me, and (2) I’m going to call my child by their first name, so it’s only fair that they get to do the same for me)

(In India, there are specific titles for “older brother” and “older sister”, such that younger siblings typically don’t address their elder siblings by name. Elder siblings, however, do address their younger siblings by name. It eventually started to feel to me like the main purpose of these words was to enforce age-hierarchical relationships, and so I was happy that English doesn’t do that. But American English still has the norm of not calling your parents by their first name, and while I don’t think most parents have the intention of using this to enforce a hierarchical dynamic, I wonder if it has the same effect.)

(This is a really tentative hypothesis, and even if it’s true, I imagine the effect would be really small. And so I don’t think that teaching your kids to call you “Mom” or “Dad” [or “Zaza”] is wrong. But I personally don’t see a good reason for the terms “Mom” or “Dad” to exist, and I definitely want my child to know that they can address me by name if they’d like.)

 

coffeespoonsposts:

My stepmother specifically said that she wanted her son (my half brother) to call her ‘mum’ to enforce a hierarchical relationship. She’s generally very liberal.

 

towardsagentlerworld:

huh, okay, datapoint.

 

warpedellipsis:

When parents get pissy that their child called them by their first name, you know it’s a dominance thing. Most parents get pissy about it. It’s not just convention. I’ve never met any that haven’t.

 

sinesalvatorem:

I once called my mother by her first name and she looked at me like I’d started speaking a foreign language. She didn’t, like, say it was wrong, or something, but she did seem to think it was hella weird.

And, like, it felt weird in my mouth, and no other kids did that, so I immediately switched back to “mummy”. It feels more natural.

But, now that you mention it, I think most parents do get upset about it. Yikes, even more hidden dominance shit.

OTOH, not having any special way of referring to one’s parents (or *children or other relatives) feels even weirder to me. Ideally, every relationship relative to the speaker should have a lexical title, for ease of sorting people. Maybe I could go by “Mother Alison”, the way nuns do?

*The child title in my culture is “Likl [name]”, from English “little”. I also like how our community has settled on “Baby” for “Baby Andromeda” and “Baby Merlin”, though that probably won’t last throughout childhood.

This reminds me that, earlier today, my cousin asked me if he could call me ‘Aunty Alison’, since that’s the adult female familiar title. I am So Touched.

 

warpedellipsis:

All other relatives, at least American-style, do go by title/relationship-name though? Like, Grandma Jane, Uncle Phil. Parents are the only ones that don’t, I think. Cousins don’t because that’s an equal relationship, not a powered one. 

I wonder how much of the resistance to alternate family structures, like multiple and blood-unrelated parents, is because of this. If you don’t have ownership of the kid, then you have no title, and if you don’t have a title, a separate title, then you have no way to know who the kid is referring to. And no way for other adults to refer to you. It’s all very set in 2-opposite gender parents for each kid, zero flexibility. If there were other names or flexibility, there wouldn’t be so much reason to resist. 

What’s the neutral name for a parent, that isn’t parent? It just sounds way too formal to go “Parent Haley”. Maybe that would work for places like schools to address the family, and I think that’s how they’ve handled same-sex relationships, but I don’t think a kid could do that. Are there other languages or cultures that have some kind of Name-(affectionate additive) or Title type thing that would fit this? Make one up?

 

sinesalvatorem:

My maternal grandmother is “Granny”, my paternal grandmother is “Grandma”, my maternal grandfather is “Granddad”, and my paternal grandfather is “Grandpa”.

I was 10 by the time I learned it was possible to use language such that The Four Grandparents might be ambiguous.

Likewise, if I had two parents of each gender, they’d be “mummy”, “mama”, “daddy”, and “papa”. Do other varieties of English not have two kid words for each parent-gender? This certainly wouldn’t be a problem for someone who grew up with my variety.

Although, really, now that I’m aware of the potential creepy ownership stuff, I think I’ll just have [title] + [name] for all relatives; people of equal or lower social status included.

I need to learn, and raise my kids with, a language that handles all this stuff better. Language nerds!, any suggestions?

 

brin-bellway:

I, too, distinguish the four grandparents by using different variants of “grandma” and “grandpa” rather than by name. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent mapping among families that do this, though: mine are “Gramma” for maternal grandmother, “Grampa” for maternal grandfather, “Granny” for paternal grandmother, and “Grampy” for paternal grandfather (though by the time I was old enough to talk Grampy was dead, so that term never got a whole lot of use). The lack of consistency always annoyed me a bit, that if I were speaking to someone outside my family, I couldn’t just say “Gramma” to communicate that I was talking about my maternal grandmother.

(Region notes: my grandparents lived in Massachusetts, part of New England. My parents moved to New Jersey after marrying, which is too far south for New England but still part of the broader Northeast.)

“Mama” and “Papa” sound slightly foreign or old-fashioned (I think I’ve only encountered them in historical novels, people from the South, and possibly-Brits-but-those-might-have-also-been-historical, never from speakers of my own dialect), but not so weird that they wouldn’t suffice if “Mom” and “Dad” were taken.

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Another difference I’ve seen is in how a child refers to parents of other children. Apparently “Mr/Mrs X” is very common, and in many places the only polite form of address. I never did that: if I knew the parent through the child, I called them “[Child’s] mom/dad”, and if I knew the parent directly, I called them by their first name.

 

justice-turtle:

In my childhood subculture, addressing any adult by first name, or by terms other than “Mr/Mrs X” or (if they hadn’t been introduced) “sir/ma’am”, was very explicitly Against The Rules for the specific reason that it defied that hierarchical dominance structure. (The term used was “disrespectful”, which in the subculture’s jargon was interchangeable with “insubordinate”. Right-wing Murrican culture is verrrrry military. I could probably write an essay on that when I’m not trying to get to bed on time.)

 

shadesofmauve:

Kids like @justice-turtle weirded my mom out, btw. She always introduced herself as “Mary, Shades’ Mom”, and then getting called “Mrs. Mauve” was like ‘WTF did that come from’. She always taught me to call people by whatever they introduced themselves as. Isn’t THAT showing respect, since they presumably gave you their preference? It still baffles me whenever people have a conversation about what to call Party X without asking the Party X involved. o_O

I’ve also known LOTS of kids who have a phase of calling their parents by their first names, and the parents don’t get upset about it. It’s pretty common for kids to do it for awhile when they first realize their parents HAVE names! It’s novel, so they test it out. 

Also, for lots of families using a first name instead of a familiar form of ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ (or some other-gendered word of your choice) feels distancing. Kinship terms can be terms of endearment.

I use first names when talking to my aunts or uncles (I use “Aunty X” when talking about them, but not to them), but I’d never call my grandparents by their first names because it’d be like if they stopped calling me ‘sweetheart’. 

That’s not saying that it’s never a control/dominance issue – it absolutely IS in lots of situations! Teachers, doctors – using last names there is an intentional choice. In some families it’s a dominance issue, as demonstrated above. But it’s not ALWAYS a dominance issue, by a long shot. 

I’d hazard a guess that the use of kinship terms in a family reflects their underlying strengths or issues; it doesn’t define them. 

 

virusq:

I called my mom “mom”. I refer to my dad by his first name. I refer to my uncles by their first names. I referred to all of my grandparents by their first names.

My parents never had a beef with it. Other adults expressed that it was disrespectful, or implied that my father was a step parent because I refused to call him “dad”. Most people were polite and just accepted it.

But I also referred to my friend’s father as “mommy”, in a completely respectful way. I made a mouthy comment and he told me that children in his presence would behave better. I told him he was not my mother, so he could not set my rules. He loomed over me, and in complete authorative seriousness said: “I AM your mother.”

Oh. Okay then. Sorry mom. I’ll clean up.

I’d propose simply using your first name with your kids, if you don’t want them to use gendered pronouns. It won’t bother them any, and anyone who is bothered by it with serve as an example of how society forces gender roles onto individuals based on appearances. :)

I also have a few friends who refer to my parents as “the parental processess”, as in, “VQ was generated as the nested node of two parental objects.”

Oh, and my mom went through a phase where she referred to herself as “Helga, VQ’s house keeper.”

Aaand my dad went by “daddy-o” for about five minutes.

So. Yeah. First names for parental units.

 

shadesofmauve:

Heh, yeah – I should’ve said that I was giving examples about what I’d experienced, not what *should* happen. If someone wants their kids to use their first name, go for it! For the kid, it’s all what they grow up with, right?

Of course, for babies there are certain noises that are easier (hence why ‘ma’ or ‘mama’ ’ is really common), but… tell ‘em what you think they should call you, and the kid will come up with whatever version of that they can pronounce, and that’s probably what you’ll be stuck with for life. :P

 

justice-turtle:

“Isn’t THAT showing respect, since they presumably gave you their preference?” @shadesofmauve See, that would be respecting *the person*. This is what I was trying to get at by mentioning insubordination, but apparently didn’t quite: “respect” as used on my side of the fence has nothing to do with individual preferences. It’s all about respecting and reinforcing *the dominance structure*. (If you go around respecting people’s individual preferences, you might start thinking people can choose whether to be pregnant or what church to go to, which is Dangerous and Wrong. ~Real~ respect, like ~real~ love, involves knowing What Is Best for the person – according to the prescribed hierarchical structure, of course – and forcing them to do that, or submitting when they force you if they’re higher in the authority structure.) (Right-wing English and left-wing English are two very different languages by this point. I don’t know if trying to do translations like this is actually helping anything at all, but I try to believe understanding is the first step toward not killing each other, so I keep doing it. :P)

 

shadesofmauve:

Oh, @justice-turtle, you did and do explain it well! I’m sorry my addition came off as ‘not getting it’. I wasn’t intending to argue with you, but to pose a counter argument – and it’s not a counter argument I expect to work with people like your family. It’s one I expect might work about lots of people who are more centrist and haven’t ever really questioned their received wisdom.

The situation you describe is more like the whole idea of “saluting the position, not the man.” (Which is generally portrayed as a good thing, but I’d SUCK at. I’m good at person respect, but suck at authority-respect, heh). It absolutely IS the clash of person-driven vs hierarchy-driven worldviews. I was representing the other end, not trying to argue with staunch supporters of the authority end. I’m… not sure how one would do that.

As to trying to find common ground or at least understanding, that’s incredibly laudable. I suspect there are people with whom it will never work, but it’s still laudable – and I always tell myself that even if the ends can’t budge, the vast majority lies somewhere in the middle, lurking in the comment section rather than posting, listening to the argument rather than joining in, and we frame our explanations for them.

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Tags:

#(October 2016) #(this branch feels like it goes far enough afield from the part involving me that #it might not quite count as the same conversation for agletting purposes #but anyway it’s interesting) #conversational aglets #language #long post