When you meet an adult woman, who is perhaps your mother’s age, what do you call her? If you’re an Indian American, you’ll probably just call her “aunty.” “Aunty” and “Uncle” have become easy fallbacks when addressing people including distant associates, neighbors, acquaintances, and even total strangers who are older than oneself. 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. Her use of the term “aunty” with a perfect stranger was both deliberate and careless. It’s time to redefine words like “aunty” and “uncle” in our vocabularies and restore their use to a rightful position.