Japanese words for great-aunt, great-grandmother?

October 12, 2007 5:51 PM

Languagefilter: does anyone know the Japanese words (if there are particular words) for great-aunt and great-grandmother? All of my dictionaries have left me in the lurch, and I don't trust Babelfish.
posted by chihiro to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

曾祖母; 曽祖母 【そうそぼ; ひいばば(曽祖母); ひばば(曽祖母); ひおおば(曽祖母)】 (n) great-grandmother

I couldn't find great-aunt, but check out http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C
posted by PowerCat at 5:55 PM on October 12, 2007

The English/Japanese dictionary on my Wordtank gives 大おば for great-aunt. Somebody will have to confirm, my Japanese is 'in progress'.
posted by jacobbarssbailey at 6:19 PM on October 12, 2007

My Kodansha's Communicative English->Japanese dictionary has an entry for 'great aunt': 大おば（さん）. Which would be "oo oba(san)". Sorta like a 'great' == "大 (oo)" tacked on to the front of a sorta generic word for 'old lady'. And looking at EDICT, it seems that Kodansha left out the extended 'a' sound...

お祖母さん (おばあさん) (n) grandmother; female senior-citizen; (P);
お婆さん (おばあさん) (n) grandmother; female senior-citizen;
御祖母さん (おばあさん) (n) grandmother; female senior-citizen;
御婆さん (おばあさん) (n) grandmother; female senior-citizen;
祖母 (そぼ) (n) grandmother; (P);
婆さん (ばあさん) (n) grandmother; (P);

Seems it should be 'oobaasan'. I'm not sure that there's a real distinction in Japanese. It reminds me of my grand-father who called every older woman "sister".

Digging a bit deeper in my meager reference material....

ojisan -- uncle
ojiisan -- grandfather

obasan -- aunt
obaasan -- grandmother.

And i guess that the 大(oo) prefix is sorta enough like "great" that...

great-aunt - 大おばさん (ooobasan).
great-grandmother - 大おばあさん (ooobaasan).

I'll stick by by primitive understanding... outside of mom/dad/(older/younger)brother/sister... everybody else is just some sort of honored old person.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:22 PM on October 12, 2007

What I've heard used is hiiobaasan for "great grandmother". I think PowerCat above has the right answers, but I wanted to mention that virtually always those words would be used with some sort of honorific, -chan or -san most likely but in some cases -sama.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:27 PM on October 12, 2007

Using '-chan' with and older person is almost always a bad thing. Same with '-sama'. -chan is a familiar thing used among friends or used with really young people. -sama is like "lord" or "princess", like how a butler talks to his master, or maybe you give a doctor or a politician the -sama treatment. Or maybe a waitress at a bar will give you the -sama treatment, as an "omg! honoured patron" thing. Otherwise it's silly.

People around your age: "hey sis`, you dropped something."
People a bit older: "hey auntie, you dropped something."
People way old: "hey grany, you dropped something."

-chan or -kun is for kids and really close friends. -sama is for subserviant people. -san is normal.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:48 PM on October 12, 2007

Response by poster: Minna-san, arigatou -- this really helps!
posted by chihiro at 7:08 PM on October 12, 2007

Actually, what everyone is saying here is pretty much correct, but it really depends on who you're addressing. If it's your own great-grandmother, it'd be perfectly all right to call her your "hii obaachan." But if you were referring to someone else's great-grandmother, you'd probably call her "hii obaasan," or if you wanted to be on the polite side, "hii obaasama."

曾祖母 (sousobo) in PowerCat's anwer is right, too, and I would use this term to talk politely about my great-grandmother to an acquaintance, e.g. "My great-grandmother used to play the piano well." 「私の曾祖母はピアノが上手でした。」
The same sentence said to a close friend would be 「私のひいおばあちゃんはピアノが上手だったよ。」

お祖母さん (obaasan) is usually used to refer to your own grandmother, and お婆さん (obaasan) is usually used to refer to a female senior-citizen.

For great-aunt, it's "oo obasan." In this case, most people would probably refer to their own great-aunt as "oo obasan" or "oo oba" and not "oo obachan."
posted by misozaki at 7:16 PM on October 12, 2007

Frak! Late night and I'm wondering how great-great-grandfather would work. I had a great-grandmother, and now I think I have a story or two to tell to my nieces and nephews. I can say 'great-great-grandfather did this..." and it would make some sort of sense.... But imagine Japanese... "your ooooojiisan did this...". Can any human parse that? What about "oooooooooooooojiisan"? I wonder if maybe they break things down to something like "your seventh grandfather was on the Mayflower."....
posted by zengargoyle at 11:38 PM on October 12, 2007

Zengargoyle, you can add as many ひいs as you want to "hii ojiisan". Great-great-grandfather: ひいひいおじいさん. Obviously after a point it starts getting ridiculous, but then so does "great-great-great-..." in English. (The 大 in the word for "great-aunt" is a red herring -- it's only applied in special cases like great-aunt/uncle AFAIK.)

There are also Sino-Japanese words for "great-great-grandfather" and "great-great-grandmother": 高祖父, 高祖母, which are used in the same situations that you'd use 曾祖父 or 曾祖母 as explained by misozaki above. I don't know of any above that, though.
posted by No-sword at 12:03 AM on October 13, 2007

zengargoyle, No-sword is right. 高祖母 (kousobo) refers to your grandparent's grandmother, i.e. your great-great-grandmother. And its usage would be the same as in 曾祖母 in my example above. But it's not very commonly used, and I had to look it up in a dictionary right now to make sure I understood the term correctly. I think people nowadays would tend to refer to their own great-great-grandmother as their "hii hii obaachan" (not "oo" for grandparents. That's just for aunts and uncles, like No-sword said above.). After that, I would probably begin to refer to my ancestors by using phrases like "my great-grandmother's great-grandmother": 私のひいおばあちゃんのひいおばあちゃん (hii obaachan no hii obaachan).
posted by misozaki at 5:16 AM on October 13, 2007