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You're listening to Away with Words. I'm Martha Barnett.

And I'm Grant Barrett. In his joy of Yiddish, Leo Rastin tells a story about a mother who calls her son Bobola.

This is a Yiddish word. Do you know this one? Bobola?

Yeah, it means grandmother, right? Yeah, but sometimes you call children that because you're suggesting that they have a future in which they themselves will be a grandmother or a grandfather. Also, it's kind of like baby. It's got the same kind of bubba sounds, right? Yeah. And he tells this anecdote here, which I wanted to share with you. There's a young boy. He's going off to school for the first time. His mother,

of course, is very nervous. And she's like, Bubba, do you have your lunchbox? Bubba, do you know your class assignments? Bubla, do you know where to get the bus? Bubla, are you nervous? Bobla, do you love your mama? Take a little sweater. Take a little sweater, Bubba. Oh, you're okay. But here's a little extra money for lunch, Bubula.

And so the boy goes off to school and comes back at the end of the day.

And his mother says, Bobola, how are you?

How was your first day?

What did you learn today, Bubba?

And he goes, I learned my name was Irving.

And then what I'm getting it here is we have these pet names for each other.

We don't call, I don't call my wife Sarah necessarily.

I call him sweet names that I'm not going to share here.

I call my son a bunch of sweet names, some things like kitty cat or puppy dog or sweetest boy and monkey butt.

Monkey butt, nice. I also call him sweet taterman.

But we have these names and they have backstories and histories.

And it occurs to me that this mother is no different from any other parent, right?

You want to express your affection and you do it, of course, through language.

Yeah.

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