Read the words below :
Mother - mama - mammy
Father - dada - daddy
Why is father not called fafa or faddy?
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7As a sidenote, father is from the old Norse faðir (where the ð (Eth/Edd) has the 'th' sound). The Eth has been dropped from use in the alphabets of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, but is still found in Faroese and Icelandic. However, kids do call their fathers 'fafa' in Denmark, or just 'far'[fah] (Far is the Danish word for Father).– DarwyCommented Aug 19, 2011 at 10:50
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1I got a chuckle out of "faddy." I cannot figure out how to pronounce it that wouldn't be immediately offensive– Bob RobertsCommented Aug 19, 2011 at 14:14
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2What about papa?– GEdgarCommented Aug 19, 2011 at 20:08
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Or baba in Mandarin Chinese, among other languages (including English: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/baba)– Jared UpdikeCommented Aug 25, 2011 at 17:30
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Someone pointed out (trying to refute the claim that certain words are innate to the human brain) that "mama" means father in Georgian.– GEdgarCommented Aug 28, 2011 at 17:15
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3 Answers
The term dad has origins in children's speech:
recorded from c.1500, but probably much older, from child's speech, nearly universal and probably prehistoric (cf. Welsh tad, Ir. daid, Czech, L., Gk. tata, Lith. tete, Skt. tatah all of the same meaning)
Daddy is the diminutive of this:
c.1500, colloquial dim. of dad, with -y
The OED quoted here adds more, saying:
Occurs from the 16th c. (or possibly 15th c.), in representations of rustic, humble, or childish speech, in which it may of course have been in use much earlier, though it is not given in the Promptorium or Catholicon, where words of this class occur.
Of the actual origin we have no evidence: but the forms dada, tata, meaning 'father', originating in infantile or childish speech, occur independently in many languages. It has been assumed that our word is taken from Welsh tad, mutated dad, but this is very doubtful; the Welsh is itself merely a word of the same class, which has displaced the original Celtic word for 'father' = Ir. athair.
A childish or familiar word for father: originally ranking with mam for mother, but now less typically childish. Cf. daddy.
?a1500 Chester Pl. (Shaks. Soc.) I. 43 Cayme. I will..Speake with my dadde and mam also..Mamme and dadd, reste you well! [Of uncertain date: the MS. is only of 1592. Harl. MS. of 1607 reads (ii. 678) 'sire and dam', (ii. 681) 'father and mother'.]
1553 Wilson Rhet. 31 Bryngyng forthe a faire child unto you..suche a one as shall call you dad with his swete lispyng wordes.
So dad or daddy stems from baby talk. This makes sense—f is a difficult sound for babies to say, but "harder" sounds like d are easier. Note, however, that just because many cultures share the same-sounding word (dada, tad, tata), this does not mean that one can make a clear distinction of origin. Though tata means dad, it does not provide substantial evidence that dad is from tata. As the OED points out, the form occurred independently in many languages.
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2For babies everything starts as gaga (youtube.com/watch?v=VwgkT34g61w).– UnreasonCommented Aug 19, 2011 at 9:56
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1Yeah, people assume the baby's saying what they want it to say, so that's what they make their words! :P– SamthereCommented Aug 19, 2011 at 10:47
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@samthere good point. It does explain why so many languages have some variant on "dada" that seem to have developed separately. People heard the babbling a put a name to it.– user10893Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 10:56
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11With our daughter, momma, bobba and dadda were the first three sounds she made, in that order. No idea who this Bobba guy is, but when I find him...– kubiCommented Aug 19, 2011 at 14:19
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1Another point along these lines is that, in my experience, babytalk regresses towards reduplication. My two year-old pronounces "Captain America" (a fixture in our household) as "Kukka Mukka". Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 22:40
It originated from Latin word for father, Tata. In time it became dada instead.
Source: wiktionary
answered Aug 19, 2011 at 3:44
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2Unless you have evidence that it actually did come from Latin (which the sources quoted by the other answerers have all missed) this is unfounded speculation. -1. Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 14:28
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2Your answer presumes that "dada" came directly from "tata", which is not supported by the sources you cite.– user10893Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 0:47
The NOAD, for dada reports the following note:
ORIGIN late 17th century: perhaps imitative of a young child's first syllables (see dad).
The note at dad says:
ORIGIN mid 16th century: perhaps imitative of a young child's first syllables da, da.
answered Aug 19, 2011 at 9:36
