July 22, 1999

knee baby

I am a college professor of French in Maryland who translated the word "benjamin," which means the next-to-the-youngest child in a family, as the "knee baby." To my surprise, no one in my class had ever heard of the word. I grew up in North Carolina and assumed that the usage was widespread there; however, I have inquired among a few North Carolinians who live in my area and none of them knows the word. I know that this word was quite common in Franklin County, NC when I grew up there in the fifties. Is it, in your opinion, a regionalism found only in a certain area of North Carolina? I called a friend who is from the coastal area of the state, and he had never heard the term either.

No need to trouble you with my opinion when there are facts available.

The Dictionary of American Regional English, which we often use when answering questions for this page, has a thorough entry for the term knee baby. You will no doubt be delighted to hear that the entry confirms your knowlege of this term.

DARE describes the regional usage of knee baby as "South, South Midlands, especially North Carolina." The term is also said to be especially frequent among black speakers in current usage. While the DARE entry does not clearly show in what parts of North Carolina the term was used, there are various reasons why other North Carolinians may be unfamiliar with it.

Knee baby has several senses, of which your 'the second-youngest child' is one. Sometimes the "knee baby" was distinguished from the "real baby," the actual youngest child. The main sense seems to be the broader 'a child just old enough to stand unaided; a toddler'.

The earliest example of knee baby is from the 1930s, and there are regular examples thereafter in dialect sources. However, there is a much earlier parallel term in Scottish use, knee-bairn (bairn is the regular Scots word for 'a child'), dating back several hundred years. This had a slightly different sense, 'a child not yet able to walk', the point being that such a child would sit on the knee, where in the American knee baby the child would stand by its mother's knee.