Very Quick Danish:
Farmor = paternal grandmother (father’s mother)
Farfar = paternal grandfather (father’s father)
Onkel = uncle (any direction)
Farbror = uncle (father’s brother)
Morbror = uncle (mother’s brother)
Tante = aunt (any direction)
Moster = aunt (mother’s sister)
Faster = aunt (father’s sister)
I don’t know how in-laws get played with all this, but for direct family you just add sviger before the relationship… Vibeke, fx, er min svigermor. Trine is Anne and Doug’s svigerdatter. They are her svigerforældre. I don’t know if Gene can be svigerfarbror or is just plain onkel. Maybe Mette or Vibeke could comment on this? (It’ll be a cold day in hell before Trine logs in to any of my websites! I have to drag her to them and beg her to read things!)
Mom and dad, you’re welcome to be farmor and farfar if you want, but it’s time to synchronize the spelling! Farfar. Farmor. One word each. Standard nouns. No funky InterNet style CapitalIzation. Farfar. Farmor. Or, later in a sentence, farfar or farmor. Okay?
And Debbie, as cool as “faster” looks, bear in mind it’s pronounced more like the English “fester.” Not so cool. But I think Mette wins the family title game since she’s Mollis Moster Mette. How cool is that?
Now back to my work…
One thing that I’ve learned with my kids is that you don’t have total control over what family members are called. Mom informed me before Hannah was even born that she would be called Nana and that was that. We tried Grandpa with Dad but Hannah made him “Pop-Pop” with her inabliity to say grandpa. Even though I’m sure we intended for you to be “Uncle Greg” you never made it beyond “Uncle” which was partially due to that infamous Karoke machine (which I’m sure will make it back to you someday 🙂 ) Gene’s dad is supposed to be “Harabugi” or something like that but the kids have call him “hajibi” from the get go. You can introduce all of us however you want but a lot of it will be dictated by Molli in a couple of years.
As for me, I guess I’ll start off as Auntie Deb but if Molli toddlerizes that into something else,I’ll proudly wear it.
Thank you for the Danish lesson. Now I know who I am – Farmor or farmor, depending on where I use the name. I think I might stick with Nana. Seriously, it is nice to know the proper Danish names for all of us. Mette’s Danish title is almost as good as my American one Nana Anna Banana!
Still love looking a the photos of Molli’s head in your hands. She is truly tiny!
Farmor