this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard :) babcia is babcia - there is no difference between paternal and maternal one - go to Poland and learn for yourself or teke some Polish lessons :)
My Polish teach who came from Pland ten years ago and returns to visit family yearly told me busia is an accepable shortened form of babcia. Babka, Babcia, Babusia, and busia all mean grandmother, but babka is more formal.
Babcia, i acedently got on to a polish website & it had this thing for you to take a quiz or somthing & it was asking me how old i was & it had an old lady & under neath it said babcia
I live in Northwest Indiana (just is case it turns out to be a regional thing) and here we call grandma "busia." I have heard one case of where it was babcia, but this was from a Detroit Pole. There is a store in a nearby town that was once owned by an older lady and the store is called "Busia's."
Exactly! Busia and Dziadzia, for both sets of grandparents, maternal and fraternal.
Our origins were Galacia (Hungary at the time) near Rzcezhov (oops). It was under Hungarian rule at the turn of the century. Later they all emigrated through Pennsylvania to East Chicago, Indiana and then to Muskegon, Michigan.
All of the other variations seem "foreign" to me :)
How very interesting this thread is? I was also looking for the definition of Busha and am now even more confused. We always referred to my Grandmother (my mom's mom) as Busha. She grew up in Manistee, Michigan but we live in the Detroit area and others I know here call the grandmother's Busha too! Maybe it's a "americanization" of Babcia?
My grandmother learned Polish from her low-class grandmother, and my grandmother learned that grandmother is busha, and grandfather is ja-ja. I think the different words have a lot to do with social class.
My family taught me that Babi means grandma/grandmother. So I called my grandma "Babi". I checked google and can't find anywhere that Babi means grandmother or grandma.
Babcia is Fathers mother and Busha is mothers mother.
Huh??? Is "Busha" even Polish? Seriously doubt it. Instead I think it's a shortened version of the Russian Babushka ~ Busha? Maybe Sasha here will chime in? (he's Russian). I've never heard the term Busha and have met numerous Poles from different regions of Poland. Remember that large parts of Poland were under the Russian occupation for generations and many Russian words became part of the Polish vernacular.
Still, Busha must be a very unusual word -probably a Russian word which became Americanized and now somehow believed to be Polish?
BUDKA for DZIADZIUŚ? Why not? anyone interested in onomastics (the study of names) has often encountered what may be called unique-case scenarios. These are nicknames or pet names limited to a single locality, family or even one branch of that family. They can arise for various reasons, inclduign somone's tendency to use or overuse a certain expression until it becomes his nickname. Soemone opften saying 'a i owszem' may eventually get dubbed Owszem.
This is just a wild guess, but let's imagine a grandpa coming round at 5 AM to wake the kids for fishing saying 'pobukda'. After a while the kids might start calling him pobudka or budka for short.
Anotehr thing, is that the same people can go by different names. In an Old World village centureis ago the same person might be called Jasiak (John's boy) by some, Kulawy (limpy) by others, Piekarczyk (baker's helper) by others and Rakowski by someone who remembered hsi family hailed from Rakowo.
Also in Ameirca, one side of the family calls one of the kids Billy, to someone else be's Will, one aunt refers to him as Butch and someone else as Bubba.
