My brothers and I called our grandparents (George and Della) "Mammaw" and Pappaw", while I believe all of our cousins called them "Grandma" or "Grandmother" and "Grandpa" or "Grandfather".
(And here's where Curt or one of my other cousins corrects me by leaving a comment or sending me an email.)
Why? It was a tradition carried over from the other side of our family, the Wellons clan! It always seemed a little wierd, with different names being used by different sets of cousins at the same family gathering. And since we were in the minority, I was always a little sensitive about it.
At my other grandparents house, all of the kids called them "Mammaw" and "Pappaw", and it seemed perfectly natural.
Perhaps this was my first lesson on learning that people, even within an extended family, sometimes do things a little different and that it's OK to be different.
When we moved down south, I found that my students, and the friends of my daughter Sarah and son Randy, used a variety of names for grandma and grandpa... with some being much wierder than "Mammaw" and "Pappaw"! And I'm not sure it was really a southern thing.
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