Why “Mama” Means Father: The Georgian Baby Talk Reversal

Imagine you are wandering through the historic, cobbled streets of Tbilisi, Georgia. You smile at a young family sitting on a park bench. A toddler wobbles away from the bench, trips slightly, looks up with teary eyes, and cries out, “Mama!”

Naturally, your eyes drift to the woman on the bench. You expect her to rush forward. Instead, the man stands up, scoops the child into his arms, and offers comfort. The woman remains seated, smiling.

Did you witness a progressive subversion of gender roles? Not necessarily. You just stumbled into one of the most fascinating linguistic traps in the world. In the Georgian language, “Mama” means Father, and “Deda” means Mother.

For linguists and language learners, this is more than just a quirky trivia fact; it is a profound anomaly that challenges one of the most widely accepted theories in linguistics: Roman Jakobson’s concept of universal kin terms. While almost every language on Earth connects the /m/ sound to motherhood, Georgian—a Kartvelian language with ancient roots—decided to flip the script.

The Universal Rule: Why “Mama” Usually Means Mother

To understand why the Georgian reversal is so strange, we first have to appreciate how incredibly consistent the word “mama” is across the rest of the globe. Whether you are speaking English, Mandarin Chinese (māma), Swahili (mama), Arabic (mama), or Queer (mama), the bilabial nasal sound /m/ is almost always reserved for the female parent.

In 1960, the renowned Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson published a seminal paper titled “Why ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’?” He argued that these words are not borrowed from a single ancestral language (like Proto-Indo-European) but are instead reinvented by every generation of babies.

The Biology of Babbling

Jakobson’s theory was rooted in physiology rather than culture. He noted that the easiest sounds for a human infant to make are open vowels (like /a/) and bilabial consonants (sounds made by pressing the lips together, like /m/, /p/, and /b/).

Crucially, the sound /m/ is the only phoneme a baby can produce while nursing. When a baby’s mouth is fastened to a breast or bottle, the lips are sealed (the bilabial position), but the nasal passage remains open to breathe. If the baby vocalizes while feeding, the resulting sound is a long, nasal hum: mmmmmm.

When the baby pulls away from the food source to breathe or complain, the lips part, resolving the /m/ into an open vowel: ma-ma-ma. Jakobson theorized that mothers universally interpreted this biological sound of hunger or satisfaction as a name for themselves. The baby isn’t initially calling for “mother”; the baby is calling for food, and the mother adopts the sound as her title.

Conversely, sounds like /p/, /b/, /t/, or /d/ are “oral stops.” They require a burst of air that cannot happen while nursing. Therefore, these harder sounds are usually assigned to the secondary caregiver: the father (Papa, Baba, Dada, Tata).

The Georgian Exception: A Linguistic False Friend

Enter Georgia. Nestled in the Caucasus region, the Georgian language (Kartuli) is a linguistic isolate. It is not Indo-European, meaning it shares no roots with English, Russian, Persian, or Hindi. It belongs to the Kartvelian language family, allowing it to develop strictly by its own internal logic.

In Georgian, the nursery terms are effectively reversed:

• Mama (მამა) = Father
• Deda (დედა) = Mother

This creates a massive “false friend” for learners—a word that looks and sounds exactly like a word in your native language but means something entirely different.

To make matters even more confusing for English speakers, the Georgian word for “Grandfather” is Babua (bearing a resemblance to “Baba” or “Papa”), while “Grandmother” is Bebia.

Deep Roots in the Language

This is not a modern slang adoption; it is baked into the very core of the vocabulary. For example, the Georgian word for “siblings” is ded-mamishvili, which literally translates to “mother-father-child.” The reversal is systematic and consistent throughout the language’s morphology.

Why Did Georgian Flip the Script?

If Jakobson’s theory about nursing and the /m/ sound is biological, how did Georgian parents escape it? Did Georgian babies not hum while nursing? Did Georgian mothers not associate that sound with themselves?

While there is no time machine to take us back to the formation of Proto-Kartvelian, linguists have proposed several theories to explain this anomaly.

1. The “easier sound” hierarchy

Some linguists suggest that while /m/ is indeed the easiest sound, /d/ (a dental sound made with the tongue against the teeth) is also extremely early in infant development. It is possible that in the ancient Caucasus, the /d/ sound (associated with Deda) was simply arbitrarily assigned to the primary caregiver before the /m/ association solidified.

2. Social Reinforcement Overrides Biology

This is the most compelling argument. Jakobson’s theory explains why babies produce the sounds /ma/ and /da/ or /pa/. However, it is the parents who decide what those sounds mean.

Babies babble indiscriminately. They say “mamama” and “dadada” and “bababa” without initial intent. In most cultures, when the baby said “mamama”, the mother said, “Yes! That’s me!” But in early Georgian culture, it is highly probable that when a baby said “mamama”, the parents pointed to the father, and when the baby said “dededa”, they pointed to the mother.

This proves that while the production of speech sounds is biological universal, the semantic mapping (attaching meaning to sound) is entirely cultural. Georgian culture simply mapped the sounds differently.

3. The Softness of /m/ vs. the Hardness of /d/

Another fascinating (though less scientific) theory relates to sound symbolism. In many languages, /m/ is viewed as soft and comforting, while plosives like /p/ and /t/ are harder. However, in Georgian, the word Deda (Mother) is the root of many fierce, protective, and foundational words:

• Dedamitsa = Earth (literally “Mother Earth”)
• Dedakalaki = Capital city (literally “Mother City”)
• Dedabodzi = The main pillar supporting a house (“Mother Pillar”)

In Georgian culture, the concept of “Mother” is associated with the foundational, structural pillar of the family and the land. The dental /d/ sound is stronger and more percussive than the nasal /m/. It is possible that the phonetics of Deda better suited the cultural perception of the mother as the strong “main pillar” of the home, leaving the softer /m/ for the father.

The Cognitive Challenge for Learners

For students of the Georgian language, this reversal is one of the hardest habits to break. It goes against a lifetime of neural pathways that link the sound /m/ to the maternal figure.

It leads to comical situations where a learner might try to ask a Georgian acquaintance, “How is your mama?” intending to ask about their mother, but actually inquiring about their father. Meanwhile, shouting “Mama!” in a crowded Tbilisi market will result in men turning their heads, not women.

Conclusion: The Beauty of the Exception

The Georgian “baby talk reversal” serves as a humbling reminder to linguists. We often look for “Universal Grammars” and biophysical laws that govern all human speech. We like to think that biology is destiny—that because all babies nurse, all babies must call their mothers “Mama.”

But language is, fundamentally, a social construct. Biology provides the raw materials (the lips, the tongue, the nasal passage), but culture is the architect. Georgian stands as a defiant, beautiful testament to the fact that there is no rule human culture cannot rewrite—even one as primal as the name we give to our parents.

So, the next time you hear a baby babbling “mamama”, remember: depending on where they are born, they might be asking for milk, or they might just be calling for their dad.