By Laura Weisskopf Bleill
Today, my daughter told me that she only has one grandmother. One is alive, she said, and one is dead. Not so, I say. You have two grandmothers, Grandma (referring to my husband’s mother) and Savta (what the grandkids call my mother, the Hebrew word for grandmother).
Savta isn’t my grandma! she shouts, adamantly.
I don’t blame her for being confused. She seems to get that my Nana, who passed away in April, was my grandmother. Her death initiated discussion about other relatives who are no longer with us, including her paternal grandfather.
But this business about Savta not being her grandmother? I don’t quite get that. So I try to explain to her what a grandmother is.
My mommy and your daddy’s mommy are your grandmothers, I tell her. She tells me, in her typical 4-year-old fashion, that I’m arguing with her.
Obviously, she’s getting tripped up in the semantics. To her, a Savta is not a Grandma, just like Grandma is not a Savta.
Maybe she’s picking up on the fact that most other kids “don’t” have a Savta. Of course, Savta in Israel is as common as Grandma is here. But in the American Jewish community, Savta is not a typical name for a grandmother; that would be Nana, or Bubbe (the Yiddish word) or just plain old Grandma — or some cute made-up name.
So I went down the path of explaining to my obstinate, know-it-all 4-year-old that some kids have grandmas who go by different names. Her cousins’ other grandma is known as Abuelita, which is grandmother in Spanish. And my younger daughter’s caregiver is called Oma, the German (and other languages) version.
It still didn’t register.
The way that my mom chose her “grandma name” was quite funny. She originally wanted to be bubbe — until my dad said that he wouldn’t sleep with a bubbe. Funny enough, my dad doesn’t have a unique name, although at one time he wanted to be called “grandfather.” Um, let me get my time machine so we can go back to 1903. At one point, the kids called him G-pa, but that seemed to be a fad.
So tomorrow, at breakfast, I’ll try to resist the urge to bring up this topic again. Of course I wonder if this is the start of her feeling different from other kids, or if I’m blowing this out of proportion.
She may be confused about the various different monikers, but in the end, I’m not concerned at all.
Whatever the name, she knows that it means unconditional love.
What do your kids call their grandmothers? How did they get their names?
Laura Weisskopf Bleill, a co-founder of chambanamoms.com, is ready to offer up said 4-year-old to the highest bidder. She writes “Being a Jew in C-U,” a column about being a Jewish suburban girl in a cornfield, on Thursdays. You can reach her at laura@chambanamoms.com.
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When Emmie was very little she started to call my mom Meema, and then she called her paternal grandmother Grandma Kathe. Henry further truncated my mom’s moniker, and calls her Meems, but he sticks with Grandma Kathe — even for his paternal grandfather!
At one point, Gideon got very self-conscious about being the only kid in his class to have a Bubbee. He didn’t want to be so different. It was a phase, though, and when he started hearing all of the other names kids called their grandparents, he felt a little better. I think it is part of the struggle of being Jewish (or anything very different) in a small town.
My mom owns a Curves for Women exercise club, and when Norah was really little I would take her with me when I went to work out. As we were leaving home I would always say, “Let’s go see Gramma at Curves!” Her little ears omitted the “at” part of the sentence, so in her mind we were going to see “Gramma Curves”!
When I was little we called our grandparents grandma and grandpa; except when we were discussing them with others or writing letters to them, we had to call them Grandma Swift and Grandma Winkler. Or Grandma Dorothy and Grandma Beulah.
But, I think this formality has also gone the way of the time machine? The favorite was when a younger cousin called our Grandma Beulah, “Grandma Budda.” Naaaice. 
My mom insists on being called “Grandog” for her one and only grandchild, my dog. I personally look forward to skipping parenthood and just being a grandma. Logistics to be figured out at a later time …
Dear Nessa,
I am proud to be your Savta. One day you will understand that I am your grandmother as well. What is important now is that you know Savta is someone who loves you very much and is there for you.
Love, Savta
I grew up calling my mother’s mom ‘Grandma’. She didn’t want to go by Bubbe b/c we lived in a very intolerant community so we tried to make things ‘easy’. Just had a Grandma and a Grandpa. My daughter only has a grandmother and a great grandmother. My MIL is technically Jewish but grew up Christian/Catholic (it’s quite a story!). Anyway, she’s just Grandma to my daughter. My Grandmother is now a Bubbe, as it seemed more appropriate than trying the whole Great-Grandma or GiGi or whatever program.
I love that there are so many ways to say who people are in our families.
My grandma was grandma. Both of them. Now we have two Grammies for my daughter, but she gets confused by it. I think it is good to have two different names. No one wanted to be Bubbe.
We had “grandma” and “grandpa” growing up, but if all four were together, then we distinguished with their names: “grandma Kathy” and “grandma Yetta.” I did have the privilege of knowing one great-grandmother and she was “Oma.”
When my boys came along, my ILs were already “nana” and “poppa” to their other grandchildren, so we stuck with that for them, and my parents are “grandma and grandpa.” It’s good actually, since both grandmas go by the same first name, and that could be a little confusing!
Yiddish was actually quite prevalent on both sides of the family, in my grandparents’ generation, but we [my generation] never used it.