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Being 22 and living in Southern Texas for all 22 of those years has made me ignorant of the outside world. Lately, I have been hearing mama and papa be used to refer to young friends or small children. Is this happening anywhere else in the world that you know of?

Not really, that would be very strange where I'm from.

21, Northern Texas here. Never heard calling it to small children before, but some of the teenagers (usually girls) here have this bizarre "friend family" where they refer to each other as if they were part of a real family.

Abi wrote:21, Northern Texas here. Never heard calling it to small children before, but some of the teenagers (usually girls) here have this bizarre "friend family" where they refer to each other as if they were part of a real family.

That happens a lot down here too. I wouldn't recognize it as bizarre though because I've been roped into several friend families myself.

I've heard it in my part of Southern California

Yep, and it seems to me to be stereotyped of blacks and hispanics. I.e., in Black Dynamite, I remember that the eponymous hero refers to his female counterpart as 'mama' at one point. And I've heard Pitbull refer to girls as mamí before.

Cael wrote:Being 22 and living in Southern Texas for all 22 of those years has made me ignorant of the outside world. Lately, I have been hearing mama and papa be used to refer to young friends or small children. Is this happening anywhere else in the world that you know of?

Referring to young friends and small children as mama, mami, papa, papi is common enough in San Salvador, El Salvador, yes.

I use "mama" as a general term of endearment for females, especially animals (for example I call my gma's dog "scruffy mama"), and I hear a lot of people around here use it similarly though it does sound a little dated to me (like a 1960's or 70's thing). I never hear papa used like that, some chicks around here call their boyfriends "daddy", though it's not really common.

In Bulgarian reciprocal kinship terms are used. I.e. a grandchild calling his grandpa "dyado" and having himself called the same by his grandfather.

Likewise in (Levantine) Arabic: a father can call his children baaba, for example, whilst a mother can call her children maama. Grandma can call her grandchildren teeta, and so on.

Never heard it here, in northern Europe / UK.

R.Rusanov wrote:In Bulgarian reciprocal kinship terms are used. I.e. a grandchild calling his grandpa "dyado" and having himself called the same by his grandfather.

immediately grandchild! an yogurt