A spider's first name, bubba, bee bo [S. Worthen

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[Poll #1919561]

I hear quite a few mothers of Grouting's cohort referring to babies as "bubbas", but until this year, I'd never heard it used in that way before.

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There are 14 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

In my day it was "Incy-wincy spider climbing up the spout."

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Seconded! :)

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I think of Bubba as a large chap in prison overalls, so hearing it used as a baby-name is weird to me, but I know people who use it both as a term of endearment and just a general term for babies.

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This.

Using it to refer to babies seemed to be much more common in the West Midlands than in Yorkshire or anywhere down south.

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My answer on bee bo didn't fit in the box. There's some research that suggests that 'baby talk' between carers and babies is a form of linguistic training, it basically runs over all available phonemes. Some are easier than others (which is why "mama" appears so early - it's one of the easiest polysyllabic strings to say.) Then when they're learning a specific language they sort out which ones belong in that language. So bee bo, bubba, etc. all fit nicely into phoneme-training. This is just my theory, but I think it's a reasonable one.

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This is my answer but better!

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I have heard "bubba" used for babies, but in the north babies were "babbas". And just to go off on a slight tangent, I have been somewhat baffled recently to learn that "ta-ta" seems to be a slang word for "breast" in US English. When I lived in Manchester, a "ta-ta" was a walk, presumably because you said, "Ta-ta!" to people on setting off.

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Ah, as in bodacious tatas. I always assumed "breast" ta ta and "goodbye" ta ta were pronounced differently.

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Me too.

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They probably are pronounced differently -- or at least I hope so, otherwise there is huge potential for embarrassment. :)

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Babies can be 'babs' (that is, one bab, two babs) in the Midlands, too. My Grandma referred to her youngest grandchild (my sister) as 'the bab' until she was at least 12, much to her disgust.

I've never heard any variation with a 'u' in it.

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I'd use 'bubba' as a term of address, and 'bubs' as the generic noun. As in 'mums 'n' bubs' groups...

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Bubba: I thought that was a term of endearment for overweight wobbly American men from the mid west.

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Bubba seems to be a relatively new thing - didn't happen when I was a kid or when my first nieces were born, but their younger siblings are referred to that way, often by the older sibling as well as parents.

As for beebo, are you sure it's not peepo? Peepo is the UK version of peek-a-boo, the game where you interact with a small child by blocking eye contact, then removing the blockage and making an exclamation. This can involve putting a blanket over the child, or just putting a hand in front of your face. In the UK that exclamation is "peepo!" and it sometimes gets used almost as a greeting to a small child in an excited kind of way. It's a bit like saying "boo!" but with with the fright aspect turned down.

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S. Worthen | Weblog

A spider's first name, bubba, bee bo

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