Grandparents are choosing their names. I didn’t get the chance
Sunday, 21 June 2026
Virginia Fallon is a senior writer for the Sunday Star-Times and The Post. She writes a weekly column on Wednesdays and is a regular Sunday essayist.
I did not get a say in my new name.
There was no consultation with the family, no group chat poll, nor even a wistful discussion about what felt right for this new phase of my life.
And there was certainly no consideration given to whether I might prefer something classic, quirky, or at the very least, familiar.
Instead, about three years ago, I was simply named.
“Yaya,” he said one day, with the authority of someone who could not yet properly pronounce “banana” but was about to shape my future identity.
“Yaya,” he said, over and again.
According to recent news stories, a new generation is moving away from traditional monikers in favour of names that better suit “the kind of grandparent they want to be”.
For them, the time-honoured titles of grandma and grandad are now out of touch - conjuring as they do the images of dicky hips and blue rinses that no longer apply to folks more likely to be found at the gym or on TikTok than knitting in a rocking chair.
It’s a nice move, the way one Sydney Morning Herald story put it. With people living longer, the size of families shrinking, and the ever-increasing modern pressures on parents, the role of the grandparents has never been so important.
And because they’re “so involved, as well as fit and active, being called ‘grandma’ can feel to some like it places them in a much older category to how they see themselves.”
Another story pointed out something nice as well - that because of increased longevity, great-grandparents are increasingly, well, alive.
“That, coupled with a greater incidence of step and blended families,” psychologist Ellen Klausner told Good Housekeeping, “means that names have to differentiate between the generations and different extended families.”
As for what these new names actually are? Anything seems to go.
Google about and you’ll find Glammys, Gigis, Mimis and Grammys. Grandfathers, meanwhile are now Pop-pops, Grumpies, Momos and, in the case of Lionel Ritchie, G-Pa.
Speaking of the latter, the Sydney Morning Herald suggested that celebrities may have set this trend. Goldie Hawn is apparently called GoGo by her grandkids, and Susan Sarandon is known as Honey by hers.
What it didn’t say, though I do unfortunately know, is that Kris Jenner - the Kardashian momager - goes by Lovey. She coined this for herself because she didn’t like her original name of Grandma.
Anyway, if Prince Harry could call the Queen Mother Gan-Gan, the bar for respectable grandparent naming conventions has already been set remarkably low.
Yet unlike all these undeniably gorgeous titles, carefully selected and often self-appointed by the adults involved, this Yaya's was utterly unprovoked and entirely unexpected.
Yaya can be a particularly slow loris so it took a while to figure that out that Yaya was, indeed, me.
For a good long time I thought this was just another way of saying “yes”, and never really questioned why it was only ever used either at me, or when something important - snacks, piggybacks, big loves - was demanded of me.
“You know how he keeps saying Yaya?” I said to my mum - who is Nana to her grandchildren and Granna to her great ones - “I think that I’m Yaya.”
I was. Stranger still is that is that Yaya is indeed an actual, proper name - because in Greek it means grandmother.
Demi Moore, by the way, is another Yaya - albeit a self-styled one.
'I had a little bit more forethought that if I did 'Yaya,' then it would move me up on the list of her first words,' she told ABC News, adding she is not Greek.
I am also not Greek but still a Yaya. What’s even stranger is how quickly the name stopped sounding strange.
I have had a lot of names in my 48 years. I’ve been Gin to my primary school friends, Ginny to my college ones, VF to my colleagues, and “that psycho hose beast” to more than a few exes.
I was mummy to my babies, then mum to my children, and for a while “the feminazi” to my teenagers. I’m also Ginia to my mum, Pins to my aunty, and Franny to my best friend.
Yaya is someone else entirely.
Yaya is the person who always has snacks. Yaya knows where the stickers are kept and doesn't care too much about bedtimes. Yaya can identify every excavator, digger and rubbish truck within a 10km radius.
Yaya, you might have noticed, is also someone who refers to herself in the third person.
But I didn't create this person. That’s entirely on them.
That seems to be one of the great joys of grandchildren - they arrive with absolutely no regard for who you thought you were.
They don't know how broke you were, who broke your heart, what mistakes you made or which ones worked out. They don't know which versions of yourself you liked best and which ones you'd rather forget.
Really, you can spend decades becoming yourself then one day a toddler turns up, points directly at you and says, 'You're Egg.'
The title itself almost doesn't matter. Whether you're Nana, Gran, Gigi or Honey the real transformation is happening somewhere else.
And perhaps that's why so many grandparents are keen to abandon Grandma and Grandad for something a little more personal. The names themselves are less important than what they represent.
It is an extraordinary kind of reinvention.
Three years after receiving my title, I answer automatically whenever somebody shouts 'Yaya!' across a playground. It’s how I sign birthday cards, am known at kindy, and speak of myself.
There are now three small people who always call me Yaya. One bestowed the title while the others accepted it without question, as though it had always belonged to me.
And now, of course it does. Of all the names I've ever had, this one arrived the latest and with the least consultation. Yet somehow it fits more comfortably than any of the others ever did.
Which is fortunate really.
Because unlike Kris Jenner, I never got to choose.
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