Calling our parents anything other than mom, dad or one of the many variations thereof is an almost alien concept to many (and in some cultures is considered downright rude). So why is it we refer to our parents in this way? Where did it come from and perhaps, more curiously, is there any culture that forgoes this seemingly universal nickname custom for parental figures?
The words can be traced back to the 1500s for “dad” and the 1800s for “mom”. As with so many etymologies, where these words were first uttered and by whom is a mystery. Even the Oxford English Dictionary has admitted that they have “no evidence” on where the word “dad” originated. The word “mom”, on the other hand, is a slightly different story and it’s widely believed that the word was born from the much older word “mamma” which itself can be traced back to the 1500s in English. This, in turn, can be traced back to Latin where “mamma” meant “breast” or “teat”. From this word, we also got the word “mammalia” and later “mammal” to describe animals that suckle their young.
This brings us to the amazing part- a word extremely similar to “mom” occurs in almost every language on Earth. We don’t mean that there is a word for “mom” in every language; we mean that the word for “mom” is shockingly similar across nearly all of the most commonly spoken languages on Earth.
For example, if you wanted to address your mother in Dutch you’d say “moeder”, if you were to travel to Germany on the other hand you’d call her “mutter” while over in Italy you’d refer to her as, “madre”. Now we know what you’re thinking, those are all European languages.
So let’s mix things up a bit and list the words for mom or mother in some more, shall we say, “exotic” languages, from an English speaker’s point of view, and see if you start to notice a pattern:- Chinese: Mãma
- Hindi: Mam
- Afrikaans: Ma
- Ancient Egyptian: Mut
- Swahili: Mama
As you can clearly see from this list, there’s a very peculiar trend with “mom” in various languages in that it’s nearly universally pronounced with an “m” sound. If you’re still not convinced or think that we’re perhaps cherry picking examples, here’s a pretty exhaustive list of ways to say “mother” in a number of languages for you to peruse at your leisure. With a few exceptions, our favorite of which is the Mapunzugun “Ñuke”, you’ll note that they pretty much all employ an “m” and often a “ma” sound.
As for the word “dad”, while there is certainly more…
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