- published: 06 Jun 2012
- views: 2315350
In American usage, bubba is a relationship nickname formed from brother and given to boys, especially eldest male siblings, to indicate their role in a family. For some boys and men, bubba is used so pervasively that it replaces the given name...The nickname may also be used outside the family by friends as a term of endearment.
The linguist Ian Hancock has described similarities between the African language Krio and Gullah, the creole language of African-Americans in the isolated Sea Islands of South Carolina and points out that the Krio expression bohboh (boy) appears in Gullah as buhbuh, which may account for the "bubba" of the American South. (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/06.htm)
Robert Ferguson notes in his “English Surnames”’; Bubba corresponds with the German bube, a boy. This matches Saxon and Hibernian tradition.
Because of its association with the southern part of the United States, bubba is also often used outside the South as a pejorative to mean a person of low economic status and limited education. Bubba may also be taken to mean one who is a "good ol' boy." In the US Army and Marines, bubba can mean a lay soldier, similar to grunt but with connotations of endearment instead of derision (e.g., "Can you make that device easier to work with, 'cus every bubba is gonna have to use it.").
Thomas Bubba Trammell (born November 6, 1971) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder and designated hitter who played for the Detroit Tigers, Tampa Bay Rays, New York Mets, San Diego Padres, and the New York Yankees. During his seven Major League seasons, he batted .261 and hit 82 home runs. Trammell appeared in the 2000 World Series as a member of the Mets.
Trammell was born on November 6, 1971, in Knoxville, Tennessee. He grew up with his mother, Brenda Graves, father, Clarence L. “Buddy” Trammell, and older sister, Kimberely Diane Trammell. He was named after Bubba Wyche, a Tennessee quarterback. His father said that Bubba walked around the house holding a bat since age 2. When his mom asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he always said that he wanted to play baseball. According to his father, “We put a batting cage in the backyard when [Bubba] was 14. He’d be out there swinging a bat eight hours a day. He’d come inside for a sandwich and go right back outside. He wore me out so I got an automatic ball feeder for it and headed back inside to the air conditioning.”