Happy Father's Day Pop Pop, Opa and Hippo

"Honey" will be celebrating Father's Day with his granddaughters today.

He didn't start out as Honey. (His real name is Sanford.) But my friend's older daughter (who's now old enough to have a celebratory beer with the aforementioned Honey) used to hear her grandmother refer to grandpa as "Honey."

And so grandpa became "Honey," (along with Grandma Julie), for both the inventor of the name and her younger sister.

Children have their own unique way of coming up with new names for people and things. (I went to high school with someone whose first name is Paul but who went by Brudd. If I recall correctly, it was a derivative of "brother," spoken by someone who couldn't get all the consonants down yet.) Not only do they rename siblings, kids also have a habit of coming up with new monikers for their grandmothers and grandfathers.

To help mark Father's Day today, we're honoring the wonderful expressions of love children have had through the years for the grandfathers in their lives.

When her grandson was about to be born two years ago, Jill Nippert of Geneva felt she was too young to be called "grandma." She and daughter Ashley, the mom-to-be, started to think of different names. "She came up with the name 'Mormor," which is "grandmother" in Swedish. It's 'mother's mother,' which fit perfectly with the Swedish side of my heritage," Nippert said. Husband Dan then wondered about the Swedish version of "grandfather." When told it was "morfar," or "mother's father," Dan laughingly rejected the name.

The reason? He said that when young Hanson Sawyer Nippert began to talk, "morfar" would morph into "more fart."

"We all had a good laugh at that," Nippert said. And Dan ultimately opted for Pop Pop.

Much as with the Nippert family, ethnic considerations also play a part in what the Mueller children of Batavia call their grandparents.

Maddie, Michael and Mary acknowledge their Dutch heritage in calling their Mueller grandparents Omi and Opa.

Jen Mott-Mueller jokes that her dad, Dick, wanted the kids to call him "Uncle Dick," as he felt - as so many grandparents feel! - too young to be a grandfather. He answers to Granddaddy, while Grandma is Nanie. She called her own grandparents on her dad's side "Granmott" and "Grandaddy," so I guess it's easy to see where her kids came up with the name for her dad.

In my family, we called my dad's mother "Grandma" and mother's mother Nana (pronounced Nonny). The grandfathers? Well, that was easy. Though they both got called Grandpa, when we referred to them amongst ourselves, one was "Grandma-Grandpa" and the other was "Nana-Grandpa." This made perfect sense to us, though I'm sure we got a few strange looks along the way.

My late uncle, when my cousin was pregnant with the first grandchild in her branch of the family, took great delight in talking about how he was going to have his grandchildren refer to him as the very formal Grandfather, instead of Grandpa, or Papa, or even "hey you."

Web sites are rife with various real-life examples. I came across an entire, very earnest conversation about whether "Bumpy" is a common nickname for grandfathers, or was this popular primarily in the Southern states? Answer: Seem to be a lot of Bumpys out there, along with Bumpa, Bebop, Bumpy and Boompah, apparently the name of Jimmy Stewart's character in "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation."

And then there's Grandsnaps, PooPoo, PeePaw, Gramps, even Hippo. That last one resulted when a child tried to say "grandpa." The mom lovingly interpreted it as "Hippo," and as she said, "sharing my father's sense of humor, I 'helped' it stick!" That granddaughter is now 25 and they all still love the name.

For even more grandparent nicknames, check out "Grand" magazine, which has a whole section on grandparent nicknames and the stories behind them. (www.grandmagazine.com/grandparentnickname.asp)

Of course, names can change over time. For example, the Muellers started out calling their great-grandmother GG, for great-grandmother. But she became Dede, short for her own real name, Fidelia.

Those able to call grandfathers anything at all should consider calling themselves lucky, as well. My youngest daughter heard her sister and me talking about grandfather names. "You could call ours 'dead,'" she remarked, somewhat caustically. You could indeed. No grandfathers in our family.

So celebrate today. Love the grandfathers - and dads! - in your lives. All those grandfathers out there no doubt are looking forward to time with children and grandchildren today. And that's no matter whether granddad is Grandpa, Pop Pop, Papa, Opa, Grandfather, Honey, or even Hippo.