Don’t make me feel old! The over-60s who refuse to be called ‘gran’

Do you prefer Granny or Grandpa or Grammy or Nanna or Grams or Granddad or Granda or, perhaps worst of all, Pops? Photo / Getty Images

Becoming a grandparent is a glorious moment. After your decades of hard work, your children are grown up. All being well, you can look forward to years of all the joys of young children, but in mercifully smaller doses than before. Look after them, play with them, fill them with unsuitable food, hand them back. What could be better?

There is one fraught question: what will you be called? Thanks to yoga, statins and the smoking ban, British grandparents feel younger than ever. Thanks to Botox and Ozempic, they look younger, too.

It is understandable there is resistance to sloughing off the old identity to become Granny or Grandpa or Grammy or Nanna or Grams or Grandad or Granda or, perhaps worst of all, Pops, at a time when many are only just buying their first lycra cycling shorts.

That’s certainly what the author Anthony Horowitz believes. Writing in The Spectator this week about the arrival of his grandson, Leander, Horowitz says he has one rule: “I will not be called anything that begins with ‘g’. If [Leander] wants to be friendly, he can call me Anthony. If he wants to be polite, then it’s going to have to be ‘sir’.”

There are many name options when you become a grandparent. Photo / 123rf

Horowitz is not alone. When I interviewed Anna Wintour earlier this year, she explained that her grandchildren call her “Anna.” The editor of American Vogue is many things, but although she might be a grandmother, she is nobody’s Granny.

Some grandparents go the other way, happy to embrace the new phase of life and its traditional nomenclature. My parents became Granny and Grandpa with no questions asked. When Prince George was born, the then-Duchess of Cornwall was adamant she would be Gaga, rather than Granny.

Charming, if tempting fate on the cognitive front. Even when you decide your name, children may have other ideas when it comes to pronunciation: Grandad becomes RanRan or Granny becomes Gagi, or Ganny or Grandad becomes Umpa.

The chicest option is to have a non-English tradition to fall back on, which gives “Granny” or “Granddad” an air of mystery. A Polish friend called his grandparents Babcia and Dziadek, which must have been glamorous at nursery.

For men, there is Nonno (Italian), Opa (German), Baba (Zulu) or Pappouli (Greek). Women have Gogo (Zulu), Bubbe (Yiddish), Mamie (French) or Nain (Welsh) or Babicka (Slovakian) or Grancha (Welsh again.) Perhaps best of all is the Danish, Bedstemor, which translates as “best mother”, a sentiment with which many grandmothers would no doubt agree.

Sadly, by the time you have grandchildren, it is usually too late to do anything about your national heritage. We English must do what we can. Insisting on a name can seem officious, but those who do not are putting themselves in the hands of children, which is a bigger risk. Without a clear instruction from on high, or even despite that, grandchildren will make up their own minds.

My maternal grandfather was clear that he was Granddaddy, with four d’s. But beyond that, my grandparents were delineated by geography: Granny Southwick (specific) and Granny Scotland (less so).

Still, it could be worse. If you are a grandparent and have ended up with a name you didn’t choose, be thankful it is not too descriptive. There are worse things in life than being Grandpa.

Gransnet, the online forum for grandparents, is a rich seam for tales of grandparents named for physical properties (Squidgy Nan, Papa Beard) as well as hobbies (Nanny Gin).

Out of the mouth of babes…