By my count…
…in an average week, I get called five different words for dad. Which is interesting because I only have the one kid. So, why so many names for dad?
As with all synonyms, context is everything. And my personal context is that I live in Japan and my kid is bilingual between English and Japanese. Which means that some of those words for dad come from her alternate language.
Here’s a quick primer on how to say dad in Japanese; there are three basic words in daily use. First, there’s chichi which translates directly as father. Chichi is written as a single kanji, 父, and is a humble word you use when you want to talk about your own father without actually calling them Dad.
But chichi is not really a form of address1. I mean, no one calls me that and I’d be a little weirded out if they did. Instead, we take the same kanji, add a formal O to the beginning and the honorific ~san to the end and you now have the word otou-san.
Otou-san is how you address most dads. Your friend’s dad is friend’s-name-no-otou-san2 and your own dad is just Otou-san. Maybe Otou-chan if you’re feeling especially close to them. My kid uses both of these, otou-san or otou-chan, but more often, she just calls me papa.
Lots of kids in Japan call their dads papa. Not only is it just easier to say, it’s far more familiar and intimate. There’s some debate as to whether this a borrowing from English, Portuguese, Spanish, or some other European language, or whether it’s just that “pa” is one of the easiest sounds for human mouths to make. Either way, it’s the default for kids during their early years.
Papa is directly synonymous with otou-san in that it is also used as a way of directing attention to someone’s familial relationship. For young kids, instead of name-no-otou-san, you might hear name-no-papa3. And, even though they are directly synonymous, the context can be quite different.
For example, let’s say I am at my kid’s school, for whatever reason, and the teacher refers to me as kid’s-name-no-papa. I know that everything is all good and we’re just hanging out. The second the honorifics get busted out and my own name is used, well, there’s trouble in them thar hills.
Thus far, if you’ve been counting along, you’ll see that we’re up to three, including the diminutive tou-chan, just from Japanese, which leaves us with two from good, old, English: Dad and Daddy.
Before we talk about those two words, though, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the word father. If I’m being honest, I don’t think anyone has ever addressed me directly as Father. And I know my kid hasn’t. In fact, the only times father, either as a title or just a description is applied to me is when I do it myself. And that’s usually only when I’m doing my taxes. It just feels too formal and too old-fashioned4.
Dad or, more commonly, Daddy, on the other hand, is something my kid uses all the time. Especially when she wants something. It’s interesting to me, though, how daddy and papa exist in my daughter’s mind. Papa is a perfectly good English word and yet she never uses it in English. When she calls me Papa, she is speaking Japanese. When she says Daddy, English5.
Bilingual kids are fascinating because they use language in ways that those of us who learn languages later in life never do. There are things that are intuitive to these kids that make us adults sit back and do a double-take as we discover new connections within and between languages through their innate sense of how it all makes sense.
Which is a long of way of saying that, on any given day, depending on my kid’s mood, the language we’re speaking, and, generally, which other people are around, I am known as Oto-san, Papa, or Daddy.
I am okay with this. But it makes me wonder, if you’re bilingual or bi-cultural, what do you call your dad? Does it change based on whichever language you’re speaking or only on the context? If you’ve got kids who speak more than one language, what do they call you (or your partner)? Drop me a comment, I’d really like to know.
The Pitch
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What We’re Reading
Normally, this is where I’d mention a book I’m reading or interested in, but, uhh, I’m behind in my reading. So, until I get caught up, maybe next month, maybe in ten years, I’m going to take a different tack and recommend some poems more-or-less related to the week’s topic. This week, I’ve got three to share:
My Papa’s Waltz by by Theodore Roethke - vivid rich imagery of a young child and their father stumbling around the kitchen.
Daddy Dozens by Jamila Woods - schoolyard insults and the life of a dad as seen by a child.
Languages by Carl Sandburg - the magic and mystery of language as it shapes our world, as it shapes us.
This is kind of like the difference between writing father without a capital letter - without the uppercase F, it’s just a word for a male parent. With the capital F, well, that’s when things get complicated.
The no here is a possessive particle, like of.
This happens with pets, too. When we first brought home our dog, Lucy, and began taking her to dog parks, I would often find myself referred to as Lucy-no-papa or, Lucy’s dad.
In my mind, at least, father, as a title, brings to mind Victorian school children in woolen coats and short pants addressing stern men with mustaches and monocles.
She hasn’t quite reached the “But daaaaaad….” stage of life yet, but the day is coming. God help me, it’s coming.