I am reading Myths from Mesopotamia as translated by Stephanie Dalley. Although these myths were written over 4,000 years ago, the parallels between them and the Christian Bible are very clear – Creation, the Great Flood, the Epic of Gilgamesh and so on (Wow, I’ve been posting rather religious entries lately). One can see the succession of these evolve into the more mythological beginnings of the Old Testament and I am sure that scholars have studied them with great seriousness and purpose for many years. However, this post was not supposed to result in a discussion about the similarities, differences, or continuation of these myths from civilization to civilization over a couple millennia.
Il mio ragazzo ed io had a conversation about the following excerpt – please pay close attention to the last highlighted portion.
**Mami is is the Sumerian deity/goddess who helped to create human beings from clay. She is also referred to as Aruru, Ninmah, Ninhursaga, Belet – ili, and Nintu. The paragraphs below depict the proper rites to perform and respectful homage one must pay to Mami after childbirth. It also establishes how the pregnancy term was set and why we use ‘mommy’ in reference to our mother, at least from our wishful and loose interpretation of the text.
Mami to mommy, capisce? Well, I thought it was a humorous homophone and I’m glad that it was pointed out to me. I love studying etymology. Merriam-Webster offers this history of the word ‘mother’ -
- Etymology:
- Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor; akin to Old High German muoter mother, Latin mater, Greek mētēr, Sanskrit mātṛ
Since most of our words are derived from foreign languages, I still say the possibility that we took ‘mommy’ from a Sumerian deity’s name is plausible (it would be pretty cool if that were true, right?!) – it’s not an unsubstantiated argument. If that didn’t convince you, consider that ‘mami’ in Spanish is translated to ‘mommy’ in English and where do you think the Spaniards took that word from – the Sumerians, of course!
Time for sleep before I scare all of you away…
Seems logical to me. A little knowledge don’t hurt nobody.