When used as a noun (e.g., "... a grandparent walked by"), grandfather and grandmother are usually used, although forms such as grandma/grandpa, granny/granddaddy or even nan/pop are sometimes used. When preceded by "my ..." (e.g., "... my grandpa walked by"), all forms are common (anywhere from "... my grandfather ..." to "... my Gramps ..."). All forms can be used in plural, but Gramps (
plural Gramps) is rare. In writing,
Grandfather and
Grandmother are most common, but very rare as a form of address. In speech,
Grandpa and
Grandma are commonly used in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In Britain, Ireland, United States, Australia, New Zealand and, particularly prevalent in the Canadian province of
Newfoundland and Labrador and
English-speaking Quebecers,
Nan,
Nana,
Nanna,
Nanny,
Gran and
Granny and other variations are often used for grandmother in both writing and speech. In
Bangladesh,
Pakistan, and many parts of
India, maternal grandparents are called
Nana and
Nani. Similarly, paternal grandparents are called
Dada and
Dadi. One's parents' maternal grandparents are called
Par-nani and
Par-nana. On similar lines, parents' paternal grandparents are called
Par-dadi and
Par-dada. Numerous other variants exist, such as
Granny, for grandmother.
Gogo may be used for either. Given that people may have two living sets of grandparents, some confusion arises from calling two people "grandma" or "grandpa", so often two of the other terms listed above are used for one set of grandparents. Another common solution is to call grandparents by their first names ("Grandpa George", "Grandma Anne", etc.) or by their family names ("Grandpa Jones", "Grandma Smith"). In North America, many families call one set of grandparents by their ethnic names (e.g.,
Hispanic grandparents might be called
abuelo and
abuela or "abuelito" and "abuelita", French grandparents might be called
papi and
mamie, Italian grandparents might be called
nonno and
nonna, or
Dutch and German grandparents might be called
Opa and
Oma. In
Flanders pepee or petje and memee or metje are most used). In
Friesland, a common pair is pake and beppe. Northern Chinese people often use
laolao and
laoye, while
Mandarin-speaking Southerners often use
wài pó (外婆, mother's mother) and
wài gōng (外公, mother's father), to refer to maternal grandparents; paternal grandparents usually are called
nǎi nai (奶奶, father's mother) and
yé yé (爷爷, father's father). In the
Philippines, grandparents are called
lolo (grandfather) and
lola (grandmother). Languages and cultures with more specific
kinship terminology than English may distinguish between paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents. For example, in the
Swedish language there is no single word for "grandmother"; the mother's mother is termed
mormor and the father's mother is termed
farmor. However, the other
Scandinavian languages,
Danish and
Norwegian, use words which specify the kinship like in Swedish (identically spelled among all three languages), as well as using common terms similar to grandmother (Danish: bedstemor, Norwegian: bestemor). ==Great-grandparents and beyond==