where did the term mom and dad come from
Mama and papa
The basic kinship terms mama and papa are a special case of false cognates . The cross-linguistic similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition . These words are the first word - like sounds made by babbling babies ( babble words ) , and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby - talk lexicon . Thus , there is no need to ascribe to common ancestry the similarities of ! Kung ba , Aramaic abba , Mandarin Chinese bàba , Persian baba , and French papa ( all `` father '' ) ; or Navajo amá , Mandarin Chinese māma , Swahili mama , Quechua mama , Polish mama , Romanian mama and English `` mama '' ( all `` mother '' ) . However , some scientists believe that ' ma ' and ' pa ' were among the first words that humans spoke . 
The basic kinship terms mama and papa are a special case of false cognates . The cross-linguistic similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition . These words are the first word - like sounds made by babbling babies ( babble words ) , and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby - talk lexicon . Thus , there is no need to ascribe to common ancestry the similarities of ! Kung ba , Aramaic abba , Mandarin Chinese bàba , Persian baba , and French papa ( all `` father '' ) ; or Navajo amá , Mandarin Chinese māma , Swahili mama , Quechua mama , Polish mama , Romanian mama and English `` mama '' ( all `` mother '' ) . However , some scientists believe that ' ma ' and ' pa ' were among the first words that humans spoke .
Mama and papa are the first word like sounds made by babbling babies, and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby - talk lexicon. Some scientists believe that 'ma' and 'pa' were among the first words that humans spoke.
These words are the first word - like sounds made by babbling babies ( babble words ) , and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby - talk lexicon . However , some scientists believe that ' ma ' and ' pa ' were among the first words that humans spoke .