The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought | Page 5

It seems, however, to be a noun derived, with the agent-suffix _-t-r_, from the root ma, "to measure." Skeat thinks the word meant originally "manager, regulator [of the household]," rejecting, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, a suggested interpretation as the "producer." Kluge, the German lexicographer, hesitates between the "apportioner, measurer," and the "former [of the embryo in the womb]." In the language of the Klamath Indians of Oregon, _p'gishap_, "mother," really signifies the "maker."
The Karankawas of Texas called "mother," kaninma, the "suckler," from kanin, "the female breast." In Latin mamma, seems to signify "teat, breast," as well as "mother," but Skeat doubts whether there are not two distinct words here. In Finnish and some other primitive languages a similar resemblance or identity exists between the words for "breast" and "mother." In Lithuanian, _m��te_--cognate with our _mother_--signifies "wife," and in the language of the Caddo Indians of Louisiana and Texas _s��ssin_ means both "wife" and "mother." The familiar "mother" of the New England farmer of the "Old Homestead" type, presents, perhaps, a relic of the same thought. The word dame, in older English, from being a title of respect for women--there is a close analogy in the history of _sire_--came to signify "mother." Chaucer translates the French of the Romaunt of the Rose, "Enfant qui craint ni p��re ni m��re Ne pent que bien ne le comperre," by "For who that dredeth sire ne dame Shall it abie in bodie or name," and Shakespeare makes poor Caliban declare: "I never saw a woman, But only Sycorax, my dam." Nowadays, the word dam is applied only to the female parent of animals, horses especially. The word, which is one with the honourable appellation dame, goes back to the Latin domina, "mistress, lady," the feminine of dominus, "lord, master." In not a few languages, the words for "father" and "mother" are derived from the same root, or one from the other, by simple phonetic change. Thus, in the Sandeh language of Central Africa, "mother" is _n-amu_, "father," _b-amu_; in the Cholona of South America, pa is "father," _pa-n_, "mother"; in the PEntlate of British Columbia, "father" is _m?a_, "mother," _t?a_, while in the Songish _m?n_ is "father" and tan "mother" (404. 143).
Certain tongues have different words for "mother," according as it is a male or a female who speaks. Thus in the Okanak����n, a Salish dialect of British Columbia, a man or a boy says for "mother," _sk'?i_, a woman or a girl, _t?m_; in Kalispelm the corresponding terms for "my mother" are _isk'?i_ and intoop. This distinction, however, seems not to be so common as in the case of "father."
In a number of languages the words for "mother" are different when the latter is addressed and when she is spoken of or referred to. Thus in the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and ?atloltq, three British Columbia tongues, the two words for "mother" are respectively _at_, _ab��uk_; _?t_, _abEmp_; nikH, _t?n_. It is to be noted, apparently, that the word used in address is very often simpler, more primitive, than the other. Even in English we find something similar in the use of ma (or _mama_) and mother.
In the Gothic alone, of all the great Teutonic dialects,--the language into which Bishop Wulfila translated the Scriptures in the fourth century,--the cognate equivalent of our English mother does not appear. The Gothic term is _aithiei,_ evidently related to _atta,_ "father," and belonging to the great series of nursery words, of which our own _ma, mama,_ are typical examples. These are either relics of the first articulations of the child and the race, transmitted by hereditary adaptation from generation to generation, or are the coinages of mother and nurse in imitation of the cries of infancy.
These simple words are legion in number and are found over the whole inhabited earth,--in the wigwam of the Redskin, in the tent of the nomad Bedouin, in the homes of cultured Europeans and Americans. Dr. Buschmann studied these "nature-sounds," as he called them, and found that they are chiefly variations and combinations of the syllables _ab, ap, am, an, ad, at, ba, pa, ma, na, da, ta,_ etc., and that in one language, not absolutely unrelated to another, the same sound will be used to denote the "mother" that in the second signifies "father," thus evidencing the applicability of these words, in the earliest stages of their existence, to either, or to both, of the parents of the child (166. 85). Pott, while remarking a wonderful resemblance in the names for parents all over the world, seeks to establish the rather doubtful thesis that there is a decided difference in the nature of the words for "father" and those for "mother," the former being "man-like, stronger," the latter "woman-like, mild" (517. 57).
Some languages apparently do not possess a single specialized word for