Mother - The words for mother are worldwide analogue. Words in most languages are referable to
two basic words, *amama and *anana. In the Zulu-language in South Africa both forms exist. umama
means the own mother, unyoko is “your mother” and unina means “his/her mother”. Perhaps the
*anana meant original not the own mother.
But in another theory, the word named a social status. The form with [n] denotes the
-->grandmother, anna.
In another idea it depended in any kind on the situation. Or perhaps for calling the mother was used
another word than, when it was spoken about her.
It prevailed in some Uralic languages like Skolt Sami jeäˊnn, Inari Sami enni, Kildin Sami е̄ннҍ,
Northern Sami eadni, Komi-Zyrian ань (anʲ) Udmurt анай (anaj) and Hungarian anya. Uralic
languages equate in the denotation of parents to Turkic languages, like Turkish anne, Kazakh ана
(ana) and Kyrgyz эне (ene). The word stems in Uralic languages fittingly from the mother lineage
mtDNA-U5, which is a subclade of macro-haplogroup U of that derived mtDNA-K too. I assume in my
sub-page -->the gender-counterparts in the haplotrees it constitutes the original counterpart-lineage
to the Y-haplogroup G that has high percentages in Turkish males.
The [n]-root prevailed also in America, for example in Nahuatl nantli. Is there a connection of the
word with being expelled?
Because Uralic’s were, so I think, expelled from the Chinese area and haplogroup Q of Native
Americans was expelled into the forbidding climate of Central Asia. Seemingly both lost their old
female counterparts.
Primeval stayed Greenlandic and Inuktitut anaana and Miyako on the Ryūkyū-islands in the south of
Japan アンナ (anna).
Georgian დედა (deda) may be from the same root and the primordial [n] became [d] in the language
of Y-haplogroup G. It is borrowed into Moksha тядя (tjadja). In the Indo-Iranian language Bakhtiari in
the southwest of Iran, ‫( دا‬dâ) could be related.
If English mother, Dutch moeder, German Mutter, Icelandic and Faroese móðir and in the other
Scandinavian languages mor have a Pre-Norse part in the word is not barely clear.
Old Irish máthir, Latin māter and Sanskrit मातरः (mātaraḥ) show a vowel [a] in the first syllable.
Ancient Greek μήτηρ (mätär) matches the most with the Irish. [e-e] came supposing from [a-i].
The *-ter/*-tjr-part means that the basic morpheme, in this case m_-, does something.
It existed in Old-Greek lyter, “liberator”. The Indo-European root is *ma-χ?-ter.
Lithuanian motina I found it as the only with a rounding after the [m]. But it has not even the IndoEuropean ending. It must be a Uralic and directly related with Mandarin 母亲 (mǔqīn). It matches
nearly exactly. Why doesn’t it exist in the Uralic languages I searched?
Thus the part of the Germanic word mother is Semitic, I think. Arabic ‫( أم‬ʔumm) and Maltese omm
match with the first part of English mo-ther.
You could assume a Pre-Norse root *mw-/*wmw-, but the Semitic word exists in Old-Norse. It is used
for -->”grandmother”, amma.
This Prime-Semitic etymology exists in Europe in the Basque language with ama, and in Albanian ëmë
too. In the region of India, there match Dravidian languages like Tamil அ மா and Sinhalese අ මා
(ammā), in Telugu అమ and Malayalam അ
(amma) and in Nepali आमा (āmā), but also in North
America in Navajo amá.
The Hebrew words ‫( אמא‬ʔimāʔ) and ‫( אֵם‬ʔem) derived in difference from *ʔjm. There are similarities
to Estonian ema, Ingrian emoi and in Karelian emä. The same root like in Hebrew occurred in PreNorse apparently. We will determine in this article that Pre-Norse people had more than one word
for mother. I think they were used in different situations.
A stratum of Y-haplogroup I2 occurs in Sardinia: In a Sardinian dialect there is a form immamma.
Outside of Europe there is a similarity with Austronesian languages to Jarai amĭ, Rade amĭ and as a
stratum in Korean 어미 (eomi), 에미 (emi). This is perhaps the word of the female counterpart to Yhaplogroup C, mtDNA-N. Malay and Indonesian ibu are certainly related too, but -m- shifted to -b-.
The Nivkh-language equates by ымк (ymk) or by ымыка (ymyka). It is not clear if the whole word
belongs to the root. If the -k doesn’t belong to it, the root stands near to the Semitic. In Malay
equates emak. If the -k is part of the root isn’t clear here too, or if there is a relation to the Nivkhlanguage.
In the Old-Norse dictionary is found one word in first instance, eiða. The word occurs in Finnish as
äiti. The diphthong at initial was certainly divided by a glottal phoneme. The Pre-Norse root was
presumably *ʔaʔida, or *(ʔ)wʔida. Old-Norse -ð- evolved in this case from -d- because otherwise the
Finnish word wouldn’t contain -t- in presence of [i].
The only match outside of Fennoscandia constitutes in the Semitic language Tigrinya ኣደ (ʔadä).
In Old-Norse there was another word mōna. Inside of Europe it may be related with Modern Greek
μάνα (mána). There was a primordial root *mwna. I like to say it is a further haplogroup I-word.
Perhaps this here is the un-emotional form used by adults. Outside of Europe exists words with m-ncombination too, like Korean 어머니 (eomeoni).
In Dhivehi on the Maldivian islands to the south of India ަ‫( މަ ނމ‬manama) there is a root m-n-m.
There were at least three words for mother in the Pre-Norse language. Supposing, the primordial
meaning of the words was known the Old-Norse word for grandmother wasn’t used only for her but
also for the mother. And words for the mother were used for other persons if the emotional
connection applied. The [n]-root wasn’t found and I think it was because it stands for being
submissioned and the Pre-Norse culture was matriarchal.