Special question that I hope you, as the place to go for names, can help me with.
My children are almost at talking age and I want them to call me something else then mom or mommy. This is what I called my own mom and I do not have good memories or a good relationship with her. I hoped after giving birth to my kids “mom” would grow on me but it doesn’t. So I decided to look for alternatives. I know some kids call their parents by their first names, but that feels unpersonal to me (and their dad will be dad/daddy).
[name_f]Do[/name_f] you have any brilliant ideas? What do your kids call you or what did you call your mother?
I call mine Mom, Mama, Mama [name_m]Bear[/name_m], Ma, or Mother. I’d probably want my kids to call me Mama or Mom, though I wouldn’t mind them choosing (as long as it isn’t my first name. That’s borderline disrespectful, in my opinion). I’m trying to think of what other people I know call their mothers beside what I listed already… I know someone who calls her mom Momsy. Another says ‘mum’, even though we are American. One of my sisters calls our mom “maja” (mah-jah), for some reason.
I use Mum myself, though I have had to catch myself using my mum’s first name after spending, say, a night with people who don’t call her Mum, or when I call her Auntie [name_m]Louie[/name_m] when around my younger cousins.
If I have kids, I think I’ll encourage Mumma. Other things I’ve heard include Moomy and Moomoo.
In this case I would personally choose to go by Mum or Mummy, which aren’t much of a stretch and still manage to differentiate from the problematic Mom/Mommy. Other than that I would go by Mama which is pretty universal.
My favorite would be Mama! You could pronounce it MAH-mah, or mah-MAH which is is what I call my own mother since I’m Greek.
On the other hand, I know a girl who calls her mother by her first name. She’s very polite and she and her mother have a great relationship, and while I did find it a little odd in the beginning it’s definitely not too weird if you’d consider that.
I call mine mum, mama (mandarin/chinese pronunciation), mumma and mummy depending on why I’m calling her (and what I want lol), a lot of my friends have some different ones, we have different languages such as [name_f]Ama[/name_f]/[name_f]Amma[/name_f] ([name_f]Indian[/name_f] and Sri Lankan), some call them Mumma and then their name or nickname, I also know someone who uses Moth for their mom (I think that’s super cute actually), “birthgiver” (that’s what she refers to her mum at all times when she has friends around) or the beegee…yeah I think that’s it for offbeat mom names.
Not sure if you’re a fan of [name_f]Louisa[/name_f] [name_f]May[/name_f] [name_u]Alcott[/name_u], but I went thru a long phase where I referred to my mum as Marmee! She was a good sport about it and it did not last forever! I think it was acceptable to her as we read [name_m]Little[/name_m] Women together at bedtime and she was touched by the memory! I still will refer to her as Marmee if we are in a crowd where starting a sentence with “mum” will get every women’s attention.
