Mémé Tartine

When I was little, both sets of my grandparents were called Grandpa and Grandma. But my great-grandparents were Opa and Oma, and I had a Baba, too. I've always been a bit fascinated by people who have a Poppy and Gran, or a Gigi or a Nona or a Yeye. It's only in my adult life that I met someone with a Mémé, which is, apparently, what every Franco-Quebecois person calls their Grandma. (What can I say, I grew up in the Canadian prairies.) And now that I'm in Montreal, I hear it everywhere; there's even a little cafe down the street called "Mémé Tartine."

What I'm getting at is that I would imagine that many Anglos would not even know that the word Mémé is equivalent to "Gran." In Crimes horticoles, there's a lady called Mémé, but it never really explicitly says that she's the protagonist's grandmother. It would be clear to any Francophone, but if I left her as Mémé, maybe an English-speaking reader wouldn't pick that up.

I see a parallel in Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, (yes, I know, I refer to it a lot: I just really like that book!) where there's a character named "Ti-Lou." I got halfway through the novel, thinking that it was just a very original name, before I realized that it really meant "Petit Lou."

So maybe I could call her Gran or some such equivalent, or else call her Mémé and just add a little note that she's her Grandma?