I'm a mother of a 3 year old son. I just started calling him bubby because I usually hear it referred to as a brother, a bubby.
My mother-in-law said that she heard Fran Dresser on the TV show "The Nanny" call her aunt a bubby. So we were wondering... what is the real meaning for the word or name, "Bubby"?
Thanks,
Inquiring Reader
From the granddaughters:
We've been asked this question a few times. Recently we learned there is a movie called, Bad Boy, Bubby, but that has nothing to do with us.
There's even a "singing Bubby" who will come to your house and perform a Jewish-grandmother-esque telegram. But that's not our Bubby.
One of the more famous "Bubby's" is a restaurant in NYC, called... you guessed it... Bubby's. Hey, they should give us a discount.
And yes, you are right. There are times when the name Bubby is as a term of endearment for a brother.
But in our case, Bubby is the classic name for Grandmother, in Yiddish. We've been calling our grandmother "Bubby" since the beginning. Many Jewish families do this, though they spell it in a variey of ways: Bubbie or Bubbe.
A year ago in June, another woman sent us the same question, and Bubby responded. We're reposting that below for your enjoyment:
Dear Bubby,
I am the mother to a 3 month old daughter that I have started to call Bubby because it sort of sounds like Baby. My mother heard me calling my daughter this and said that it means grandma. Is this true? Should I not call my little baby Bubby? Where does this term come from?
From,
A New Mommy to a little Bubby
Dear New Mommy to a new Bubby,
I think calling your baby Bubby is very cute. The name does mean Grandmother in Yiddish and you can call your baby anything you like.
I know of a case where a family lived in a neighborhood where the people could not pronounce the child's name. So they called her Honey. And forever after everyone called the little girl "Honey". And Honey was Honey to everyone. She was my sister and a beautiful person.
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Cool, I never knew this! I'm Russian and call my grandmother Baba or Babu. It seems to be similar in many languages.
By 
, at
8:18 PM
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Whether Bubby is reminding us that boyfriends do not substitute for warm jackets in the winter, or that it's
better to receive a compliment than a brick, she always has 
Hopefully this will be as much fun for new readers as it will surely be for her.
And if not, well, as Bubby says, it will all come out in the wash.
♥
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