Picture this: You’re a single woman in your early forties who
has taken a liking to a handsome twenty-something guy who lives in your apartment building. Hey, if it works for Demi, why not you? So you gather the courage and leave a box of samosas at his door, with a note that says, “Just made a batch and thought you might like a few.”
An hour later, there’s a knock at your door. He’s standing there in shorts and a tank top, looking as studly as ever. “The samosas were great,” he says. “Thank you for thinking of me, Aunty.”
Well, that scenario probably never happened to Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan, but she’s nevertheless peeved about being called “aunty” by people she barely knows, as she states in this month’s Khabar (her piece originally appeared in India Currents, linked below).
Today, the title “aunty†is so overused and misused that it has lost its position and meaning. Indian-American children are taught that every adult female is a potential aunty; many carry this presumption to the conclusion that any adult female older than them can be an aunty. I’m not referring to school children here, but to those I see as adults, the lipsticked and bearded variety, who ought to know better. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with terms like ammayi, or cheriamma, or edathi, all specific Malayalam words that acknowledge individuals who are close family members and deserve rightful respect in the family’s pecking order. There are equivalent terms in every Indian language: terms like maami, mausi, and didi that all validate close family connections. But amongst English-speaking Indian Americans, the frequent use of “aunty†or “uncle†is more often an example of lazy speech, or a desire to bump the individual in question into the category of doddering older-other, than it is a thoughtful moniker of respect. Therein lies the problem. [Link]
Srinivasan, Director of Development at SVILC, Santa Clara County’s Independent Living Center (and aunty to Shashi Tharoor’s sons), notes the importance of aunties in our culture — “Children have always needed aunties: women who were caring and courageous enough to share in the act of mothering” — and offers some guidelines on using the term “aunty”:
If I have not known you when you were a child, and been a part of your life as you learnt and grew—I am not your aunty.
If you are an adult with or without furrows on your temples, and our paths have never crossed before—I am not your aunty.
If your children are younger than mine, or you are the same age as my grown children, but I am meeting you for the first time—I am not your aunty.
And if you’re just not sure what to call someone? Ask; don’t assume. [Link]
I’ve been called “uncle” a few times and not just by my nephew and nieces, so I’d like to offer some guidelines too. Whatever your age, you may use the term “uncle,” as long as you use it in sentences like these:
“Sure, Uncle, I’ll babysit your children every Friday night.”
“May I mow your lawn for you, Uncle?”
“To my Uncle Melvin, I leave all my worldly possessions …”
And, of course:
- “Here are some samosas I made for you, Uncle.”
I was called Auntie in my twenties.
It is also used as a sort of snide sexual innuendo in the street/gulley.
i’m in my early twenties and i still get called uncle. my rule is simple: if we could have been in high school together/ we aren’t related you can’t call me uncle.
But what would Auntie say?
Is aunty similar to ma’am in the us? In the southern part of the us, ma’am is used for any female older than yourself or older than 17 and is used when trying to be polite. But in other areas of the us, i think ma’am is used more for women in their 30s/40s.
Aunties with such courage would definitely be, er, ballsy. What’s that they say…or is it only in England? 😉
Aunty can be controversial for anyone less than 15-20 years older than you. More than 25 years older is definitely fair aunty material in my book.
i’m really happy to see i’m not the only one who is bothered by “aunty”. it’s especially weird to see the 20something married couple down the street calling women in their 30s “aunty”. i’m pretty horrified when i hear it. i’m barely 30, i don’t have children, and unless the person saying aunty is prepubescent, it shouldn’t pass their lips. “bhenji” is acceptable, as is “didi”. but aunty? gimme a break!
exception of course goes to mere batiji, who is the only 20something who will EVER have permission to call me chachiji. and it’s only because she’s cute. and because i actually am her aunt!
the cougar thing makes sense. late 30ish to 40ish women are ridiculously horny. ditto of course for men aged 13-25. so obviously god intended the 2 to be together.
I’m 23, its been a rule, everybody married is Aunty. I actually call aunties at work aunty, they were a little angry before but now they know I’m stupid so they let me be.
one time at a wedding i accidentally called a dude younger than me uncle. he was in his early 30’s but could’ve passed for late 40’s early 50 easy. i had forgotten his name so i convientiently defaulted on uncle, until i realized he was the groom’s cousin, which would make him around my age. he smiled knowingly, like it happened to him before.
pretty bad, but not as traumatic as the accidental “congratulation’s, when are you due?” classic.
I tend to call young Indian immigrants/recently migrated relatives (who are a few years older than me)chachi/chachen. I don’t use this rule with Indian-Americans (people who are born and brought up in the USA and are older than me). I feel like I would be offending the former group if I didn’t.
If someone chose to call me Aunty I would prefer it to what I get called in India: MADAM! (in my world, a madam is a women who runs a house of prostitution) Ma’am (I don’t think anyone under 40 should be called ma’am) or MEMSAHIB (last I checked I don’t have any power OR money…)
First ask.
Defaults:
For males who are within 20 years of my age: Machan! Machi!
For females who are within 20 years of my age: Dudette!
Here is a related question: What do yo call your girlfriend’s mom (or boyfriend’s dad)? Aunty doesn’t sound right given that you might call her mom one day. In the past I just sort of avoided the situation by looking directly at her and by ignoring the subject of the sentence while going straight to the verb.
heheh… amitabh, is your hair curling yet with all the invective being thrown at the screen.
“When you turn 21, you are an adult. It works against you if you continue to call older adults ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunties’!”.
I tend to agree with this comment from a poster from the original article.
I am surprised nobody’s brought in Savitabhabhi into the mix yet. I have a feeling that’s where melvin started his research.
[sotto voce: does the wife know this is the anthropological survey you are doing these days].
khoofi: when are you due?
what the heck does that mean. furrows on your temple? is that physiognomy from some juvenile space fiction teevee show? i had a life to live and must have missed that.
bigg and proud of it.
Me wants some sweet auntie loving.
I dunno, being called uncle always makes me feel vaguely mature. Which i’m given to understand, is a good thing.
“What do yo call your girlfriend’s mom”
baby’s mama, mama
bonking an auntie was a sure fire way to being hero worshipped in my younger days. Dont know if it is still the case in India 🙂 First time I was called an Uncle I was 22 – totally mortified 🙂 Easy solution to an Uncle is to call a person “Sir” or “Saaar” – no offence taken and it is neutral. Dont know about any easy solution to Aunty – Madam obviously does not work well 🙂
easy solution. Call them Mrs XX or Mr YY. If they dont like it they will tell you fairly quickly. Also you win big brownie points for being respectful 🙂
A few things
I am 23, ABD, and am called Uncle or Dada by kids up to 12. 10-15 years age gap is fine with me. When I was 20 an 18 year old called me Uncle; that was awkward.
DBD ladies who qualify for ma’am status (around 50) are automatically “aunty” as they are older than the kids group that I grew up with (oldest now 41; youngest now 21). To me, 25-30 years qualifies as part of the previous generation. If they were old enough to establish their adult lives when I was born, that certainly qualifies.
ABD ladies under 50 are never aunty, unless if they have introduced themselves to me that way. It will be interesting to see how this changes in the next generation as there will be a larger mix between adult ABD and DBD.
Until recently, I have noticed that “Uncles” and “Aunties” did not include younger adult men and women within their honored aunty/uncle group. This has changed with the arrival of multiple grandkids in the community–former uncles are now called various names for grandparents. So for some young families, older siblings call me (no title) or dada (brother) while younger siblings calls me kaka (uncle).
It would really suck to be called “Aunty” if you are in fact an “Uncle”.
They do say that as men get older we start to look like lesbians.
I am just thankful that you never refer to your TAs as Uncle. 🙂
But what if the Mrs XX had not changed her last name to her husbands after marriage ? Maybe its safe to call her Ms. XX instead (not same as Miss XX) . I think Ma’m works just fine too.
My brutally honest hubby says (even though I’m well into my 40’s) I don’t have the “aunty look” yet because I don’t have wrinkles (thanks to my never ending supply of melanin courtesy of my skin & heritage), not a single gray hair, and that I act “immaturely”. But I won’t turn into to the Aunty Christ & blow a gasket if someone doesn’t call me Aunty. My daughters friends (both Desi and non Desi) usually call me Mrs. M. or address me by my first name.
I think the whole Desi Aunty/Uncle naming system is just to make a connection even though there usually is no blood relation.
Maybe we can start something like “You might be an uncle if you wear athletic shoes with dress pants” (along the lines of you might be a redneck if you (fill in the blank).
The “aunty” described in the post is more like a cougar (or cougarette?).
Pagal, You may want to try Shahla
Uncle Cookiebrown remembers a time when “Aunty” and “Uncle” were not terms universally used in English speaking middle class India. It was more of a Delhi/Punjabi bourgeois thing; you used either the relevant term in your regional language (“Mami”, “Chacha”, “Khala” etc.) or “Mr. X” or “Mrs. Y”, or simply “Sir” and “Madam”. But after c. 1965 “Aunty” and “Uncle” took over rapidly, and was exported with the diaspora.
were exported…
really gud one :).I just completed 23.But even all the kids in my apartment(even 9th standard kids) used to call me uncle….nyways now i’m used to it…
Nice article. What gets my bakra is when colleagues children who would be about 10 years younger than you, call you Aunty/Uncle! But I understand their dilemma, that is how they have been brought up. Madam/Saar is a common Tamil/Kannada way of referring to people they are not too comfortable calling by their first names, or are new to them.
But funnily enough, I call the much much older people as Mrs. M or Dr. V. I think it is respectful and I really really really HATE that term, Aunty. I am A—atte to my wee little nephew. My brother is C–mama to my kids :-). May I use this post and send it off to many other people in my town?
Good forum for me to post my classified: 40something DBD lady living in D, seeks hot 30something guy/studmuffin/handsome young man.
I love 30 something men. They rock, big time. Problem is, in India I don’t get to meet them often enough 🙁
lol @ the opening line “Picture this: You’re a single woman in your early forties who has taken a liking to a handsome twenty-something guy who lives in your apartment building. “
In my ealry 30s, but hardly ever get called uncle – bhaiyya is far more common. Having your own household/being married is a key part of it; if you still haven’t ‘settled down’ or gotten married then your unclehood status is yet to come – within India anyway. Would very rarely call a woman ‘aunty’ just because she was older than me, even if it was by 20+ years. ‘Aunty’ is reserved for the female friends of your mothers, irrespective of age and the mothers of your childhood friends (regardless of age or attractiveness here). I would think it would be a bit too familiar really to use this with someone just becuase they are older than you. Usually restricted to elder women, whom you have known well for a long time but who aren’t blood relatives. As other commenters have noted above; it is really just a sign of showing respect and deference or used to establish a connection where no kinship exists.
I can understand how this would be mortifying to any lady in the said age cohort who would still like to think she is desirable to younger men. I remember at Uni a good friend who got along well with a very sweet, attractive girl several years younger but who never got around to formally expressing his interest; I asked him what the problem was and he said, “I really like her but she reminds me of the kind of friends my mother has, you know Aunty XYZ”. Needless that killed things right there. So there are reasons to beware of the Aunty tag, if you are looking to bridge the age divide. Though, I have to say, if you are looking to avoid being dubbed with the ‘aunty’ brush; leaving freshly cooked samosas in something that looks like acare package isn’t the best way to go about it; since that is the kind of thing an Aunty would do…
In this hypothetical situation, the 40-ish lady in question received a “Thank you, Aunty.” note. In this case, “Aunty” means “I like you, but not in that way.”
Because, guys being guys, if he did like her like that, then the next time she opened her door she would find him plastered to the other side of it.
She’s coming at the aunty moniker issue as being inappropriate but I wish she’d just call it what it is: ageism.
I’ve been with my partner for over 9 years and it’s only been in the past 3 months that I’ve graduated from calling his parents Dr. XX and Dr. XX (yes, both doctors) to FirstName-Aunty and FirstName-Uncle. My partner calls my parents “Mom” and “Dad” and I was tired of waiting for his parents to invite me to call them something more familial. So I wrote them an email in February addressing them as FirstName-Aunty and FirstName-Uncle, and his mom wrote back signing her name the same! I am still a little giddy about it. It’s like I’ve finally been admitted to some level of family-member status. 🙂
Also, this conversation would not be complete without this shirt. Why isn’t it available in a women’s?
Not neccessarily. It is habit in India to call women older than you “aunty” out of respect because that is how everyone is trained since childhood.
He still could be up for a romp with her though. Like I said, “aunty” is often used as a sort of sexual innuendo as well. If he was interested in her in that way, he would not neccessarily stop calling her “aunty”.
hey. i resemble that remark. to continue You might be an uncle if…
you might be an aunty if … 1. you think le khoof is any of the above and snickered.
badoom-bishhhh..
Doubt anyone would be that kinky. Very niche market if it exists.
I know. Damn those transgender desis!
Heh. i’m gonna file that retort awawy and whip it out at the next coctail party.
oooo Manju’s whippin’ out the re-torts…
Party girl to another: you’ve got arms like Michelle Obama.
Manju: Hey. i resemble that remark!
bess-auntie, what can i say? i’m bigg and proud of it too.
Do doctors expect people to call them Dr.so and so, outside of their office/hospital? Because Im not calling anyone that unless they are my doctor. It just seems to uppity to want to be called that outside of your place of work.
And you’re cute – so I’ll let you mow my lawn and eat my samosas but you’ll have to shut up about the “auntie” thing. K?