What do you call your mother?

Hamsterchops

Here's an interesting link to a website totally dedicated to this topic, regional maps and all included 😊

https://starkeycomics.com/2025/01/26/british-and-irish-words-for-mother/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CMammy%E2%80%9D%20is%20used%20by%20children,a%20Scots%20word%20for%20mother.

John_Rambo

Still waiting for someone to log on and say mháthair.

BaywatchHQ

It is normal in rural Ulster to call your mother mummy although not necessarily in public. 'The mother' is usually said in public. I often viewed calling your mother "mum" as a Protestant thing or at least a posh thing.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123300969#Comment_123300969

Yeah I would have thought it was only unionists who call her Mummy, but it's actually catholics whom I've heard say it the most.

"Mum" is English and middle-class by and large. No idea how we ended up calling her Mum when we're from the country. We're middle-class but not the wealthy, posh end of it. And all my relations were the same. Civil service, teaching, nursing, the bank, accounting rural middle-class. Notions I suppose.

Poochie05

From Dublin and we called her Mommy when we were kids but that became Mom as we got older and it sounded too babyish to use Mommy. She called her mother Mommy too and she was born in the 40s so no US TV influence at that stage.

silliussoddius

Auld doll.

JupiterKid

We called her Mum, sadly gone a long time now. She died suddenly and tragically young.

Middle class Dublin, Catholic upbringing, originally from Belfast. My dear late mum came from rural Tyrone.

uch

Ma

talla10

I cringe when I hear anyone say ma or da. I'm from a working class Dublin family and I still hate it, sounds awful

littlefeet

I have a friend in her 60s whose mother is still living, and she calls her Mammy, as in she will say I am going over to Mammy's today I think it's lovely.