http://alethes.net/ Notes Alethes.net Why we call parents ‘parents’ Jose Maanmieli Why do we call our parents ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’ and other similar words? Researchers tend to say that those words come from the sounds babies make, but this isn’t a very satisfactory answer. Probably all societies teach children to call their parents by names and nicknames that mean they are parents. This is very strange when you think about it. Whenever someone is special we give them a proper name. Parents are very special but we give them common names. This practice does not seem to change with adulthood or cultural progress. In modern society, a father will typically get upset if you, as his child, called him by his personal name. On the other hand, you will get upset if he did not call your dog Charlie but any other word indicating a dog. ‘I am your father’, he will argue, and draw on hi s biological knowledge. Whereas you will give a number of cultural reasons why your dog is special. The relationship between language and reality is viewed predominantly from two fundamental perspectives. 1 One sees the mind as a sort of computer that would allow the child to identify her real parents. The other one sees it as a sociocultural entity, so that such a reality could not be something the child logically discovers, but something that is created in interaction with others. This theoretical dichotomy is probably as unhelpful as arguing with your parents over who is special and why. It means that science does not understand words that are central to our sense of reality. Indeed, it is true that parenthood has a biological basis, but it is also true that parenting is a markedly cultural activity. Should we not elucidate this question before attempting to solve any other big mysteries? This question has been in my mind ever since I became a parent myself. A question of meanings We know that all languages have words and their respective meanings. Yet there are clearly two types of meanings: natural and social. All societies must have words for the earth, the sky and the 1 These perspectives go back to the way Aristotle disagreed with Plato on the problem of universals or the properties of things. The first believed these were always instantiated in the material world, whereas the second thought they existed separately as ideal forms. It wasn’t until the 20 th Century that philosophers realised this metaphysical disagreement was all about language, with Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein taking the respective positions of seeing ‘meanings’ as some kind of atoms versus seeing them as the result of human activity. In linguistics, it is reflected by the debates between Chomsky and his enemies. However, as I have explained, this problem can be reduced to the very ‘unphilosophical’ question of whether the nouns Mummy and Daddy are common or proper, because being a parent is a primary property for any human mind or society.