instance, the same principle of symbolism which leads the Welshmen to say tad for 'father' and mam for 'mother,' and the Indian of British Columbia to say maan, 'father' and taan, ' mother,' or the Georgian to say mama 'father' and deda 'mother.' Yet I have not succeeded in finding anywhere our familiar papa and mama exactly reversed in one and the same language; the nearest approach to it that I can give is from the island of Meang, where mama meant 'father, man,' and babi, 'mother, woman.'[1]
Between the nursery words papa and mama and the more formal father and mother there is an obvious resemblance in sound. What, then, is the origin of these words father and mother? Up to a certain point their history is clear. They belong to the same group of organized words with vater and mutter, pater and mater, πατήρ and μήτηρ, pitar and mâtar, and other similar forms through the Indo-European family of languages. There is no doubt that all these pairs of names are derived from an ancient and common Aryan source, and when they are traced back as far as possible towards that source, they appear to have sprung from a pair of words which may be roughly called patar and matar, and which were formed by adding tar, the suffix of the actor, to the verb-roots pa and ma. There being two appropriate Sanskrit verbs pâ and mâ, it is possible to etymologize the two words as patar, 'protector,' and matar, 'producer.' Now this pair of Aryan words must have been very ancient, lying back at the remote common source from which forms parallel to our English father and mother passed into Greek and Persian, Norse and Armenian, thus holding fixed type, through the eventful course of Indo-European history. Yet, ancient as these words are, they were no doubt preceded by simpler rudimentary words of the children's language, for it is not likely that the primitive Aryans did without baby-words for father and mother until they had an organized system of adding suffixes to verb-roots to express
- ↑ One family of languages, the Athapascan, contains both appá and mama as terms for 'father,' in the Tahkali and Tlatskanai.
