……Auncle?
Someone wrote…
OK, your sibling has a child. What relation are you to this child if you are neither their uncle nor their aunt?
What’s your experience?
Posted by Sarah Dopp on May 31st, 2011 at 08:00 am
Category: questions, your voice 12 comments »
May 31st, 2011 at 8:21 am |
Ive been “Moo” to the kids before.
[Reply]
May 31st, 2011 at 8:45 am |
We’re going with ‘aunk’ or ‘aunkie’ at the moment… though there’s also the option of waiting to see what the kid calls you on their own.
[Reply]
May 31st, 2011 at 9:22 am |
I’ll be officially “Aunt Boo,” but I want the child to just call me Boo. I’m nick-named Boo for Boo Radley (To Kill a Mockinbird) by my brother (the father of my nephew). It’s a pleasantly non-gender specific name. Sometimes nicknames are the best way to go. You can replace a nickname with the title of Aunt or Uncle and avoid the question all together.
[Reply]
May 31st, 2011 at 10:24 am |
It’s not because of gender, but in our family, me and my brother’d never call my mom and dad’s sisters and brothers by a title. We just always called them by their first names.
[Reply]
May 31st, 2011 at 2:20 pm |
The same is true in my family, Daniel.
But should my brother ever have children, I’m not sure I’ll want them to call me Elijah — not as a respect thing, but because of gender. I think I’ll let the (potential) kids decide for themselves.
[Reply]
June 1st, 2011 at 11:29 am |
I have big questions with this one. My sisters daughters are everything to me, but I don’t think her husband would let me around them if I started ‘messing with their minds’ so now I just grin and bear it when my girls call me auntie, and because it’s filled with so much love when they say it, for now I’m letting it go.
[Reply]
June 1st, 2011 at 11:45 am |
My nieces call me Zaza . I choose Zaza as my title, too, when filling out forms. That’s Zz. when I abbreviate it. It’s not a nickname they gave me; it’s what I have had them call me since they could talk. Sure confuses the preschool teacher, though!
[Reply]
June 1st, 2011 at 2:28 pm |
I would definitely go with “ankle”.
[Reply]
June 1st, 2011 at 10:31 pm |
Some people I know were talking about “quantle” lately as a word for this. Goes with the word for sibling I’ve seen around, “kinter”.
[Reply]
June 2nd, 2011 at 9:51 am |
This is the story of how I become an “unckie”. More than two years ago a friend of mine had a son. When I first met his son he told me you will be his auntie? no ! his uncle? no ! his unckie!!!! . Unckie means a person that is neither an auntie nor an uncle but both at the same time. I am unckie Clad to my friend’s kids and my brother’s son. Unckie is a fun title that acknowledges and honors my gender expression. I love being an unckie.
[Reply]
June 2nd, 2011 at 11:22 am |
Courage – that’s crazy! My partner is ZaZa to our niece (and i am RoRo)! How funny we both found the same gender neutral title for a little one to call us by…
We thought about this one a lot as my sister’s pregnant belly grew, as we are both really uncomfortable with gendered titles. These names just sort of came to us one night (while joking about Teletubbies) and we thought well hey, those are easy sounds for a little kid, totally unique to us, and not gendered in any way. And, no need to explain (to my somewhat more conservative sister and husband) why we wanted different names, we just wanted something special… only down side is now all my siblings are trying to invent their own names since they want to be special too :-)
My niece isn’t actually talking yet, but we worried that leaving it to see what she called us would just default into the traditional Aunt/Uncle categories. As it is my sister sometimes slips us (accidentally, not maliciously) and will say something to the little one about her “Auntie [my feminine name]” both of which grate me a little bit. So for every time that happens i make sure to whisper in my special child’s ear how much her RoRo loves her.
[Reply]
June 9th, 2011 at 10:00 pm |
These are some great ideas! I’m afraid in my family I never managed to instigate enoguh planning around my cousin’s child. In the usual manner in the family I would have been an “Auntie” as far as they are concerned but JayJay never managed to get his head round that as a young child so instead I am known to him only by my first name. Better than ‘Auntie’, but a little saddening too just because it makes me stand out fromt he rest of the family dynamic.
[Reply]