What do Catholic Serbs call the Virgin Mary?

Posted by Willing_Corner2661@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 158 comments

I’m not talking about Croats, and I’m not implying Croats are Serbs. I’m specifically asking about Catholic minorities in Serbia (Bunjevci, Šokci, and also Croats from Vojvodina) or actual Catholic Serbs (there are about 12,000 of them according to the census)

Do you say "Gospa" like Croats do or "Bogorodica" like the Orthodox?

I have a hard time imagining someone who grew up in Belgrade or a bigger city in Vojvodina saying "Gospa"

But I saw some Catholic kids from Subotica on TikTok and for example they say "Gospodin" instead of "Gospod" and "Gospa" instead of "Bogorodica", even though they speak in Serbian/with a Serbian accent

I get that Bogorodica is a very Orthodox-coded word, it’s literally a translation of the Greek Theotokos. But in Serbian it feels like it’s almost become the neutral term, something even a non-religious person might use

(Unless someone is a zoomer and just calques it from English into "Devica Marija" or something like that. I’ve heard people my age say that a lot, which isn’t technically wrong in Serbian but it does make you sound a bit like a Jehovah’s Witness)