To want my child to call their Grandma, Grandma/Nan

[gimmeadoughnut123]

Long story short - we are expecting our first child and hold traditional values, so would like grandparents to have grandparent names.
My MIL has a grandchild already and he calls her something very unique/different that doesn't resemble a grandparent like title at all, it's more of a nickname.
I'm totally ok with whoever else in the family calling her whatever they want and respect that, but for us, we would like to go with something traditional. I'm concerned that this might cause upset for not only her but my B/SIL. I don't want to look like I'm 'insulting' what she is already called.
She isn't a young Nan so it's not an age thing, and she wouldn't have minded being called Nan/Grandma, if she wasn't asked if she would prefer that or to choose something different for herself.

DH agrees, but I want to avoid offending in laws if I can.

Lisping toddlers coming up with mispronunciations or nicknames for grandparents is totally different from a grandparent inventing their own nickname unrwlated to any of the many well known terms for a grandmother/ grandfather though.

When does anyone else get to choose their own name and insist everyone uses it?

*unrelated

@tenbob it isn't a projection from my own childhood and I'm not trying to live my life through them - please don't try to psycho-analyse me. There is nothing wrong with wanting your children to use something slightly grandparenty as a name because of your own family values and it certainly won't set anyone up for any problems. Hence why I have said maybe just by popping the prefix of grandma in front of her chosen nickname, everyone is happy, and if the kid drops grandma naturally then that's fine with me.

There's nothing wrong in wanting a grandparent type name but you can't force it OP. It's not your choice.

Are you going to talk to her about it?

You honestly think you can judge a family's values by the name a toddler gives their grandparents.

Allllright then...

I'm granny to 3 of my grandson, the 4 calls me either minimum or Nonie ( he calls his mum mummy so he's not getting us confused)

My gd was calling me Nana and also her other gran. She, added on my name herself. So now calls me eg Nanna Rose and her other gm Nanna Mary. Her choice and it stuck.
In my extended family gcs added on dogs names eg Nanna Rex and Nanna Spot...that stuck too and was hilarious.

Mummum not minimum

gimmeadoughnut123 prefixing her made up name with Grandma is a good compromise.

I wouldn't even do that if the name is cringeworthy and random (not related to her real name), would just refer to her as "your grandma"to the child, and as "Jean" to your DH or when talking to her directly and leave her to establish her own name with the child.

Cousins understand that they call their mum mum (or varients) and their cousin calls them Auntie Sarah. Bilingual children automatically use the word for mum in the community language when talking to friends about their mother even when they use the word in their mother tongue when talking to her.

Not everyone has to use the same word. As long as nobody uses a rude or wildly inappropriate word or bans others from using a word there is no need for anyone to try to control anyone else's language.

But this is bonkers - your SIL/BIL are not telling you or your unborn child what to call the GM! the child has a nickname that they have used for their grandparent - tbh it would be odder for your child to use a nickname that means nothing to them.

If your MIL is happy with being called Grandma etc that's all that matters!

FWIW, my DM 'didnt want to be called nanny/grandma' because she "never wanted to be a grandmother ". She never was a patch on anything approaching a decent GM and I'd hate for her to fool herself to think that by having the same title as my GM that she should ever compare. So we invented one - robbed it from the telly - and she was happy with that

We're NC now, she got worse.

I did hear at some point that my dsis was saying that her DC should call DM by the same name as us to be consistent, but I pointed out that there was absolutely no need to be consistent as it was a name that was invented anyway. I have no idea what they settled on in the end.

Certainly had a humanising effect on my view of the Queen yes, definitely. Particularly when you find out she had to call her grandmother "your royal highness" (in private too).

@ShotsFired i thought that was just our family 😂 we had a kitkat nanna!

The only issue I ever had was with any of my kids calling anyone nanny, I will always say they aren't goats.😊
As an aside when talking to ds2 I don't use kids because he informed me once that he isn't a baby goat.😆

Within reason I think you can decide how you refer to your relatives with your child.

My poor dad was traumatized at being a grandad- he was apparently too young (mid 50’s) and I used to tease him saying we’d call him the man that lives with nana. Fast forward and my son couldn’t say grandad combined with the fact my mom uses my dads name around the house so my dis started calling him a dodgy version of his actual name which is very cute. So now my dad is made up, As though he’s beat my mom even cos his name is unique and just between them.

I only wanted to be nana first name
Everyone was happy with that

Op stop worrying.

Soon you will be utterly sleep deprived and have days that consist solely of poo, feeding , dressing and washing, all of which will be monumentally hard for reasons you can’t quite pin down.
It will be a major achievement to boil an egg or have a shower.
Torturous wrangles with family names will be on the distant distant horizon.
Congratulations on your pregnancy, and best of luck with the traditional values.

Oh dear.
OP. Don't be that DIL.
Don't be me.
I tried to make my eldest refer to my MIL in my preferred terms.
I spent 2 years struggling and correcting and then in the end by the time the child could speak clearly they were already calling MIL by her preferred grandmother name.
I completely understand that it isn't what you would prefer but believe me there are issues worth digging in over and there are some that are not. This is the latter. Unless it is lewd or grossly inappropriate just let her call herself whatever she likes to your child.

If the Queen can be called Gary by her grandson and get away with it then your MIL can be Booboo or whatever she wants.

I wanted my m'n'law to be grandma but she wanted to be called nanny. We lived in London at the time and it caused confusion as the 'nanny's' in London are hired help. People thought I had hired her. I think its from the North. But regardless - its what she wanted and I don't think you can tell someone what they are to be called. Honestly, if you are butting heads over a name I think you might want to start a m'n'law blog as I suspect you two are going to butt heads on other issues.

Blueskies - my daughter was the oldest of my Gran's great-grandchildren and, whilst I was pregnant, there was a lot of pressure on me to "get" my daughter to call her "GeeGee" (for "Great-Grandma"). It didn't work. My daughter simply called her "Grandma", like I did when I was growing up. Then again, my grandmother was a bit... forthright in her choice of what she would respond to by grandchildren ("I insisted that you call me 'Grandma', not 'Nanny', because I am not the hired help!", being just one of the arguments as to why I, as a 16 year old, was expected to call her "Grandma" and not "Gran" - which she thought was "too common"... ). I took to calling her Gran eventually, and she acquiesced... but by that time, there were 6 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, so maybe she'd just given up and learned how to go with the flow...?

On the other side, I had grandparents and great-grandparents who were all expecting to be called the exact same name. When I was 2 or 3, I got a bit fed up of calling "Nanny" and two women bickering over whether I meant them or not, whilst ignoring me... so I took to using the endearing terms of "Big" and "Little" to differentiate. Everyone assumed, still to this day some 40 years later, that it was a generational "thing" - that "Big" meant "great", which yes; yes it did... (except actually, my great grandmother was a bit on the plump side, and her daughter, my grandmother? Was all bones and angles. Apparently, I was very sizeist when I was a toddler...). My grandfathers were both of the same build, but were tagged by their wife's moniker. It worked. All of my younger cousins followed the trend, and now? My "Little Nan" is "Big Nan" as far as my children are concerned, even though she's still all elbows and angles!

Children will name as they see fit. If I have grandchildren, I hope they'll call me something that I won't mind answering to in public... but other than that? It's beyond my control. Although I'm thinking "Granny Green Hair" or perhaps "Granny 'Be Kind (To One Another)'".

My kids call their paternal granny one name and my dh sister’s kids call her something else. No issues or confusion at all. We all know who we are talking about

Ah GeeGee for Great Granny would have been amusing contrary13 - she's very sensitive about her age - getting better now, but refers to herself as middle aged (she's in her late 60s, been retired for over a decade and has various age related health conditions) and gets offended if toddlers innocently call her an old lady...

I wanted to be called Granny or Gran so that's what I'm called. I wouldn't have wanted to be called Nan or Nanny....I don't like those. If my son and dil had told me they wanted me to be Nan, I think there may have been an argument 😁

We just went with what I called my grandparents (and conveniently what dh called his) didn't consult them, his dm said she would prefer her first name as she wasn't old enough, we compromised on Nanna [first name]